First published JoNova; Imagine needing government permission to turn up your winter heating when you catch Covid, or pleading with bureaucrats to allow you to heat more rooms in your house. But don’t call it energy rationing.
Turn on your heat pump when wind is blowing, Government pleads
…
By Nick Gutteridge,
POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT
4 September 2023 • 9:04pm…
The Government insisted it was “in no way asking people to ration electricity” and that consumers will benefit in the form of cheaper bills.
In official guidance, ministers have said the switch to smart appliances like heating systems, fridges and car chargers is key to delivering net zero.
“They enable consumers to shift their electricity usage to times when it is less costly for the energy system,” the document states.
…
The Energy Bill includes powers for ministers to “mandate that electric heating appliances and EV chargepoints must have smart functionality, prohibiting the sale of non-smart devices in Great Britain”.
…
Craig Mackinlay, the MP for South Thanet and head of the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, has tabled an amendment to scrap the entire section on smart appliances from the legislation.
He said the Government was “admitting a shortage of electricity with its plans to limit supply to households and businesses through smart appliances, peak pricing penalties and reliance on irregular renewables”.
…
Read more: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2023/09/04/brits-urged-turn-on-heat-pumps-wind-is-blowing-net-zero/
Can there be any remaining doubt that claims renewables are cheaper and better than the alternatives are total nonsense?
Even if reducing CO2 emissions is important to you, there are better zero emissions alternatives to useless renewables.
Places with access to nuclear energy don’t have to ration energy. If anything, such places serve as a nexus of industry, business which take advantage of cheap energy surpluses.
Take the Welsh island of Anglesey. They used to have a nuclear power plant, Wylfa nuclear power station, which supported local industry. As far as I know nobody supplied by that plant was asked to ration energy. Instead, the nuclear plant supported Anglesey Aluminium, which employed 540 people. The Aluminium smelter was mothballed in 2016, shortly after the last reactor was shut down in 2015. I’m not sure how many people the power plant employed, but that’s a lot of jobs for a small rural community to lose.
There is some talk of replacing the nuclear reactor, but so far it’s all talk.
I once visited Anglesey, spent a week in a vacation unit. When I visited the nuclear power plant was still operating, you could see the bustle of industry. Good memories, everyone I met was nice – one of the friendliest places in Britain.
There is no doubt all of Britain could radically reduce emissions and keep energy bills under control, by transitioning to nuclear power. Suggestions nuclear is too expensive or impractical are absurd. France managed a transition to over 70% nuclear energy in the 1970s. OK it might have taken a little longer than a decade, but not much.
I believe British engineering would be up for the job, but if there is a shortage of key skills, I’m sure France would do a deal, lend Britain some of their top nuclear engineers, so Britain could copy France’s 1970s energy transition.
Meanwhile the people of Anglesey, of everywhere in Britain, make the best of it, with an increasingly detached government telling them on top of all the eye watering heating bills, ULEZ charges and hardship they’ve endured, Net Zero now means the government wants you to surrender control of your home appliances to politicians, powers which politicians assure us will never, of course, be used.
Don’t call it energy rationing.
Correction (EW): h/t CampsieFellow – Anglesey, not Anglesea
Update (EW): Smart meters could communicate with smart appliances via your household electrical wiring, which bypasses any need for you to configure your smart devices to your WIFI. Before WIFI became ubiquitous in homes, a common alternative to physically wiring up your house with ethernet cables were powerline network adapters, special network adapters which turned your household electrical wiring into a data network. I suspect this is how smart meters will be instantly connected to any smart appliances you purchase, to allow your power company or Whitehall bureaucrats to impose limits on your use of your own appliances.
If your old appliance uses too much energy – replace it or face fines.
The new green deal – you have to spend heaps, just to be worse off or the government will make you much worse off…
Remember not to use lamps and lights at night or heat when it’s cold.
If enough people freeze to death in winter. Emissions of CO2 will fall because not only will they not be burning fossil fuels there will be the added bonus of them no longer breathing out CO2. Of course cremation will be out of the question but net zero will be an achievable goal.
The aluminum smelter on Anglesey had a captive power plant but still had to close due to bureaucratic EU C credit rules.
Wylfa nuclear power station on Anglesey closed beacause it got to end of life.
Leo,
More info, please?
Did it close by bureaucratic order, or because it was uneconomic to keep it maintained and operating? Was there some part of the plant like coolant pipes that had to be replaced, at too high a cost, because cracking? Was there a public cost:benefit analysis of keeping it open?
It is really sad when expensive, useful plant like this is closed for invalid reasons.
Even cost:benefit analysis is now fuzzy because of having to include social factors like the flawed social cost of carbon. Engineers now have to enter la la land, when the desired result of a study should be only about hard, definable factors such as real demand for competitive electricity and not the demand modified by policies that require use of renewable electricity ahead of free market volumes.
Geoff S
Wylfa was an old Magnox design. It was commissioned in 1971, so it had run for 44 years. Some more info on Magnox:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnox
“Did it close by bureaucratic order”
No, read my post. September 7, 2023 5:10 pm
“had to close due to bureaucratic EU C credit rules.”
Not true,
The Rio-Tinto aluminum smelter on Anglesey closed because Wylfa A nuclear power station was coming to end of life & would be shut down in 2010. **
The power contract terminated in 2009; Anglesey Aluminum was unable to obtain a new contract at a low enough price so moved their operations to Iceland & Canada (because of low cost electricity ).
** Subsequently Wylfa’s life was extended to 30 December 2015 (when all the Magnox fuel had been used up ), the plant could have run for at least another 5yrs if fuel had been available. Decommissioning should be completed by 2025.
Anglesey Aluminum at Holyhead, Wylfa A nuclear power station & Dinorwig Pumped storage power Station ( Electric Mountain ) at Llanberis, were designed to work as a group so there would never be a loss of power.
How do I know all this … well, I live on Anglesey equidistant from both sites & look at my name !!
I am being exhorted constantly by my energy supplier to install a smart meter. There were ridiculous claims that smart meters would cut energy bills and denials that smart meters could be used to cut off your electricity supply. I see no upside to installing a smart meter at all, only possible downsides. I can see the government forcing people to install smart meters in the future, but until that happens, I certainly won’t be installing one.
Me too, under no circumstance.
I too am constantly enjoined by Octopus Energy to install a smart meter. Over my dead body. Short of non-payment of bills, under no circumstances would I allow some one else to be able to cut off my gas and electricity.
The utility always has the right to shut off your power, with or without a smart meter, if you fail to pay your bill. Though utilities invariably will issue warnings to the customer in advance of actually cutting power. The only difference is the utility does not need to make an onsite visit to turn off power.
And it also allows for the more costly Time of Use billing as the meter sends usage information every 15 minutes. They know what your usage is during peak times and can charge a premium for peak pricing. Dumb Meters only give the total usage once a month and only allow for tier rates. In my state 36¢/KWh 1st tier and 54¢/KWh 2nd tier (usage over 1st tier allowance).
If you had read my post more carefully, you would have seen that I explicitly stated that the utility had the right to cut off supply in case of non-payment of bills, smart meter or not.
Are you really happy that your gas or electricity can be turned off remotely?
My line of logic starts with electricity to the home being an essential service. The electricity is not owned by the generator people. They have merely been contracted to provide it. The electricity is to be classed as a common good, think analogy like the oxygen in the air you inhale. Nobody has the power or right to stop you using that oxygen.
I have invested many hours in study of the arcane, fascinating topic of property rights. Too few people have a clue about it. It allows a line of thinking that values the individual as well as the regulator. Bureaucrats are commonly acting way beyond what is allowed, or reasonable.
Study property rights and hammer them when they get too saucy.
Geoff S
I’m in the (happy?) position of owning 2 UK properties, one (my new place) has a smart meter and the other doesn’t.
Both are supplied by EON.
EON have been bombarding me with texts and emails since forever – I’ve ignored them all
So they (conventionally) posted what you see – It got to my new place via the redirection instruction I set up
THAT, believe or not, is another exhortation for me to get a smart meter but JUST LOOK at the price of the juice!
£2.53 for 4.48kWh and still at (18:30hrs) = the most energy consuming time for most UK households
OK, £0.40 of that will be for ‘Standing Charge’ – hence they are advertising this ‘cheap’ electricity at £0.47 per kWh (unit)
Is that some sort of joke?
Sorry, I don’t get it.
Meanwhile, it was/is obvious that until the previous owners of my new place ‘moved away’, they’d resisted EON.
But they were an elderly couple, he passed away and she was then installed in a ‘Care Home’
Their daughter was charged with organising things, from her home 30+ miles away, and couldn’t resist the temptation of a smart meter taking readings instead of her having to visit once every month to manually read the meter
There is, what I’ve just out to be, a 4,200Watt solar system on the roof here and the smart meter duly records everything.
Since its installation, the smart meter has seen:
What’s going on here is simply awful.
That EON religiously overcharge me, via a monthly Direct Debit, an amount equal to some calculation of what Government says the ‘typical home uses’
Around 8kWh per day
Despite my net daily import being less than 1kWh
(They have some concern that I may ‘Fall into debt‘. Apparently)
Add in the ‘energy payment’ the Government sent everybody, my account at EON is now nearly £1,000 in credit – yet still they charge me.
Even more galling, is that and despite they MUST know because the smart meter tells them, at what their flyer says (£0.47 per kWh) – one might argue that:
They owe me (7915×0.47) = £3,750+
I know how electricity works = everything I make/export only ever goes as far as the nearest consumer = 3 near-identical houses to mine and a large ‘greenhouse operation’ = all within 100metres of my front door.
The Silence in that regard is simply deafening.
The greed, selfishness, lies and sheer ugliness are something else..
But not unusual, EON’s behaviour here is exactly that of the entire UK Government and its supporting army, ever expanding, of petty little Hîtlɇrs
You need to get your repayment sorted out before they go bust.
Yes . Avoid direct debits like the plague. Make direct credits instead, even if you get in credit the following payments are under your control and can be adjusted down ( or up with the seasons)
Other wise change your supplier pronto so the direct debits stop and your credit can be transferred to the new supplier ( hopefully, because I know the debts do) or even better refunded
I suspect your export will earn the Solar Energy Guarantee price if it was installed in recent years (and the fact that your meter records the export more or less confirms that – older FiT deals only recorded the total solar output and any import). EOn probably offer a very ungenerous 3p/kWh for export power. You might get as much as 15p/kWh from Octopus.
The volume of export is quite high, although I assume it covers several years. If you aren’t making use of the output from the panels the economics are going to look pretty bad.
Most utilities simply install smart meters without your permission, as they have a right to do.
I am aware of no claims that smart meters directly cut individual energy bills, though the information they provide can allow a customer to vary their usage to minimize their bills. Utilities will not cut off your electricity via a smart meter unless you fail to pay your electric bill, or if you inform them that you are terminating service due to moving.
What smart meters do is enable the utility to instantly know when a power outage occurs, so that you as a customer don’t have to try and contact the utility to let them know your power is down. That is a big plus. Also, the smart metering enables the utility to notify their users of their power usage and to track their usage online, so that makes your power bill more predictable for the individual customer. My local utility does all of the above with their smart meters.
Smart meters can also be used to provide variable pricing so that power is less expensive during periods of lower demand (typically at nights) than during periods of peak demand (daytime). That DOES enable the utility to moderate the peaks and valleys of demand which results in lower costs for all customers and provides a more stable grid. And again, it provides an incentive for customers to, for instance, program their HVAC thermostats to draw less power during peak demand periods.
Smart meters are about information, not to exert utility control over customer use. More user information is always better than less or none, except to receive a shock when your power bill comes in much higher than you expected.
“I am aware of no claims that smart meters directly cut individual energy bills”.
Here’s a claim from 2018 that smart meters would cut bills. I remember numerous older claims that the savings would be even greater. All of these claims were utter fabrications to try to encourage smart meters to be installed.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44903471
Here is one of the older claims that smart meters would cut electricity bills by 8.5%.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-2059912/Smart-meters-cut-electricity-bills-youll-change-way-heat-home.html
In reality, the smart meter rollout will cost each British household £420 rather than saving money.
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-4846700/Smart-meters-cost-household-420.html
Duane says:
“Most utilities simply install smart meters without your permission, as they have a right to do.”
Fortunately not in England they don’t – at least not yet.
“Smart meters are about information, not to exert utility control over customer use.”
So when I received one of the regular power company nuisance phone calls asking me to accept one and I asked does it have the means to remotely switch off the power to my house they confirmed yes it does. Why is that functionality required at all?
And hot off the press today from the House of Commons debate on the Energy Bill the following was reported:
<blockquote>Part 9, Chapter 2 deals with Energy Smart Appliances and Load Control. Paragraph 235 defines energy smart appliances to include fridges, dishwashers, washers, heaters (presumably heat pumps and immersion heaters), air conditioners and electric vehicle charge points. Effectively this is most of the high consumption devices in any home, other than a cooker.
The same paragraph stipulates that the smart function is “capable of operating in response to load control signals from any person carrying out load control.” In other words, the control of domestic appliances will be handed to anyone the Government sees fit to carry out load control.
Centralised control of our domestic appliances, heating and car chargers. What could possibly go wrong? This is a power grab of epic proportions. The Government is inadvertently making the case against smart meters and smart appliances without even realising it.</blockquote>
See:
Criminalising Net Zero Disobedience – by David Turver (substack.com)
Only 19 MP’s voted against the Energy Bill.
Mod – blockquote didn;t work and the usual “commenting too fast” prevents edit!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!
Yeah, I also starting seeing the “commenting too fast”. WTF? I wasn’t commenting fast at all…..
Anybody with half a brain knows that if they want to reduce electricity use and save money not to leave appliances on standby, maybe turn the heating down a bit etc. No one needs a smart meter to enable them to do this, any talk of helping consumers is just industry and government propaganda. The problem with smart meters isn’t being cut off for not paying bills it’s the power companies have to restrict electricity use when it suits them. This can’t be done with standard meters so the customer remains in control. Surely everyone has the right to use as much electricity as they want when they want, provided they can afford it.
Until the new Energy Bill becomes law there is no RIGHT to install a smart meter in the UK. It is quite clear that the Bill enables power rationing via smart meters, whatever your private experience may be where you live.
…denials that smart meters could be used to cut off your electricity supply.
In California it’s already happening. In Seattle our old meter was changed out for a new ‘smart’ one. When we asked the installation crew, they said yes, City Hall could switch it off at will.
Your utility can switch your manual meter off at will too. No difference.
Each utility has a standard protocol for disconnecting power, either due to not paying your bill, or terminating service at a particular location at the customer’s request.
The difference is a utility company has a limited set of reasons to cut it off, namely, you’re not paying your bill. Now the government has it’s finger on the switch.
At present my electricity supplier can only switch off my power by coming into my house or by digging up the street. With a smart meter they could switch off my power from their office if they wanted to.
You are dangerously naïve and trusting.
Indeed.
But to do so, they need to disconnect/remove the holding ring, pull the meter, insert meter socket covers, reinstall the meter and install a gold locking ring to prevent tampering. (So the homeowner can’t reverse the process)
At present in the UK there is due process before that can happen. That is about to be short circuited by the Bill.
This is interesting stuff.
“the switch to smart appliances like heating systems, fridges”
This is a reference to the abject failure of the “internet of things”. The IoT has been left behind on the starting line by AI and that’s no surprise. Take my dishwasher – not literally, I do need it – it has an online capability – I can switch it on remotely, presumably from Timbuktu. It remains unenabled.
But why would you load up a dishwasher and then go somewhere distant before switching it on? It’s like everything else that has a clock in it….. you mostly don’t need it, but it’s there just the same.
They are pushing smart meters as hard as they can, even Albo isn’t allowed to rest in peace…
We have a lot of shale gas, and a lot of gas and oil in the North sea. But we must ‘blank’ that fact right out and imagine we depend on Russia, Middle east etc for gas.
Both.my dishwasher and washing machine have a delayed start/finish option.
I use both, especially on the washing machine, I like the fact I can load it so it runs overnight and I have all day for drying outside. I run both overnight for unloading in the morning.
Can’t see any advantage in being able to control either from a distance
As a person who worked/works with Internet of Things (IoT), I can confirm that turning every dang particle in the universe into an IoT-enabled monster is overkill and solves nothing… with rare exception. This became clear to me early on in the IoT “revolution” when there was R&D money being dumped into IoT wearables– literally computerized clothes. I wondered what problem was being solved with IoT wearables. Nothing. Someone tried to convince me that it would help diabetics, but I responded that there are already devices that make it easier for diabetics to check their blood. IoT-enabled wearables flopped, of course.
A venture capitalist tried to pitch to me the idea of planting an IoT device with every single seed planted in a crop field. What problem was he trying to solve? I still don’t know. He insisted it would drive crop monitoring literally down to the plant level. But what farmer needs to know such exact detail? And what farmer would pay another dollar or two per seed to have an IoT device planted with each seed (or cluster of seeds)?
IoT has been a little more helpful in a handful of places– particularly long-haul or tough environments. In reality, though, IoT is nothing new. The idea of networked computers sharing their data to decision makers has been around for decades.
pay another dollar or two per seed
It would probably be a good deal more than that considering the extra effort involved in planting them. Pretty sure normal planting machines wouldn’t be able to handle it.
What problem, indeed? I have absolutely no need to monitor every single plant. I KNOW some of them won’t do well. I’m concerned about the crop overall, and I can tell a lot simply by going out and looking.
Exactly, Tony. Of the farmers I’ve helped with over the years, none of them cared precisely about one plant over another. At most they want to see if a disease is about to clobber a field, which may require examining a few plants individually. But like you said, the farmer need only open his eyes to answer that question. Electronics need not apply.
Something like that, if it could last decades, might be good for Grapes. Phylloxera infestation, if detectable early, could negate the removal of acres of health plants to eliminate the critters
UK gas imports in recent years by origin and method (pipeline and LNG). It seems we are becoming dependent on the US, which is not a bright idea while Biden runs the show.
For some reason I think I have more important things to do than continously checking if the wind blows and indirectly if the energy price is high.
People have this idea that ‘cheap’ renewable electricity means low cost, but it actually means low quality.
Gotta love that chintzy energy…NOT
“Take the Welsh island of Anglesea..”
I’d rather take the Welsh island of Anglesey. Or even Ynys Môn.
And then you’ve got Gogarth, Wen Zawn. Site of the most romanticaly named sea-cliff climbs in the UK.
Fellow climber!
Thanks CampsieFellow
Beware the Isle of Mann… Mikey doesn’t want visitors
I finally got to correct a miss spelling in a post…it only took an hour for the “posting too quickly” error message to not rear its ugly head
The downward spiral of ever more state control and authority instruction continues. It does not seem to matter what flavour of political party is notionally in power they all dress on the left and let you know it.
When the political choices being offered are all found to be unacceptable what options do rational normal voters have? Who do we turn to?
Nigel Farage. I like Nigel, he’s one of the few senior British politicians I’ve met who pass the pub test, who can still pass for human when you’re having a one on one conversation with him. And he talks a lot of sense on energy and a range of other issues.
I’ve got no faith in the man.
He spent 21 years as a MEP not doing anything much except baiting other MEPs but accepting the pay cheque. Also as far as I’m aware the pension but could be wrong.
Once the Brexit vote was leave he ran away and hid. He’s made no effort to do a proper Brexit ever since. Unlike Moses he didn’t lead us to the Promised Land.
A Man of Straw
Farage lost his European pension on Britain leaving the EU.
In any case if you have a better suggestion I’m all ears.
I like Farange, too. And he gets along quite well with Trump.
I’m saying he’s as bad as the rest.
The last I heard was this in May 3023
Data revealing the members of the European Parliament fund, obtained by Investigate Europe and shared with The Ferret, includes 110 former UK MEPs such as Nigel Farage and the Conservative Lord and co-founder of the pro-Brexit Vote Leave group, Lord Daniel Hannan of Kingsclere.
If you have anything different I’d be interested in seeing it.
Ah – a private investment fund.
Funded by the EU or not?
Funded from his EU salary.
well I have put my faith in the Reform Party at lease we are fully committed to junking Net Zero and Euro-thrall. we will hav a hard battle with the numpty civil service though
“There is no doubt all of Britain could radically reduce emissions and keep energy bills under control, by transitioning to nuclear power.”
Hah! We are busily transitioning away from nuclear power in the UK, by sheer lack of forward thinking. We built nearly 17GW worth and closed all but 5.8GW. More even than Germany. We have a company in the UK that built and maintains nuclear subs; Rolls Royce. They are currently the only company going through type approval for a SMR commercial reactor, but our Govt doesn’t want to order any and wants to have a competition to decide which SMR might be best instead. Interesting to note that this ‘SMR’ produces more electricity than most of the old Magnox and AGR designs.
“I believe British engineering would be up for the job,” [see above…] “but if there is a shortage of key skills, I’m sure France would do a deal, lend Britain some of their top nuclear engineers, so Britain could copy France’s 1970s energy transition.”
That would be the EPR being built at Hinkley Point then. Massively over time and budget, plus problems with every example worldwide so far.
Meanwhile we have the worlds largest stock of plutonium and we are thinking of burying it as waste:
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/What-to-do-with-the-UK-s-civil-plutonium-stockpile
Should have said – ‘this ‘SMR’ could theoretically produce more electricity than most of the old Magnox and AGR designs’ since none have actually been built yet. I get a bit irritated by comments that x,y or z reactor should just be bought off the shelf and it would solve all our problems.
It will now take 25 years to approve the design!
You pessimist, you! The body responsible for this in the UK is the Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), who managed to do the Generic Design Assessment on the French EPR in ‘only’ 5 3/4 years.
https://www.onr.org.uk/new-reactors/rolls-royce/index.htm
Now I’m all for some real scrutiny of any reactor design being proposed, but you may feel that nearly 6 years is long enough, even if it included getting the environmental go ahead to build them at Hinkley Point as well.
RR want to build a fleet of them by 2030 – we’ll see…
The numbers are terrifying. With 30 million homes in the UK, installing 3kW heat pumps gives an extra load over today of 90 GW in the winter, virtually zero in the summer. The current grid delivers about 30 GW on average, 45 max. If we want to deliver most of this extra load by wind, then the current approx 25 GW of installed windturbines produces a little under 7 GW on average (Grid watch 2022 figures). So, an extra load of 90 GW needs over 300 GW of new turbines. During the winter when we need them, they will produce between zero and 200 GW (some huge batteries needed) and what do we do with it in the summer?
Article says:”…less costly for the energy system,…”.
Your needs or wants are less important than citizen’s.
Unable to edit “citizens” should have been “systems”.
Wow! Told I was posting fast and edit didn’t go thru but it did.
The Energy Bill includes powers for ministers to “mandate that electric heating appliances and EV chargepoints must have smart functionality, prohibiting the sale of non-smart devices in Great Britain”.
Powers for oh-so-smart bureaucrats to shut off your stove, EV charger, heater, TV, computer and all at will, because oh-so-dumb voters have put said bureaucrats in office? Guess how long that’ll last.
I guess they were inspired by the British film Dr. Zhivago, complete with stealing wood to stay warm and the building heat turned off. I just hope the African and Middle East immigrants are prepared.
We experienced an electrical sub-station failure in February 2019 during a -30F cold snap
early one morning. The new local 20 acre solar panel was covered with a half a foot of snow.
Thankfully I had a generator and was able to keep the water from freezing up. The greens
have shut down the Coalstrip plants and replaced them with wind power which in that situation were
useless. Nothing is going to change till these radical totally fail IMO.
I agree – the politicians will not stop listening to the renewable power/net zero lobby until the grid collapses and people die. This might even have to happen a couple of times so they can’t blather and wave their arms claiming Force Majeur……
I don’t see any UK politician with either the courage or intellect to take on the challenge of reversing the current policies (and actually it will take both courage and intellect)
Aren’t the commissars so nice. They are saving us money by not letting us buy what we want and need.
In the end it is the poor voting decisions that made this absurdity possible.
Did you really think those smart meters were for your benefit?
Here in Missouri, time-based electric rates are going into effect (https://www.eenews.net/articles/missouri-overhauls-electric-rates-raising-rewards-and-risks-for-customers/).
In my mind, this was necessitated by the very real concern that the utility companies will soon no longer be able to meet demand. Instead of increasing the supply of reliable electricity, we’re going to try to decrease demand.
Will time-based pricing decrease overall demand? My wife and I plan to “super heat” or “super cool” our all-electric home before peak hours and overnight. What will people without programmable thermostats do? How are people who work supposed to do their laundry? Wait until the weekend? Get up in the middle of the night and do it? Maybe just forego using major appliances altogether?
MSG:
Here is Arizona we are on a time-of-day electricity plan: ~ $0.32/KWh between 3-6PM M-F
and ~ $0.09 all other hours & on weekends. I assume they have installed a smart meter to manage this system (I hope I am wrong!). In the summer we precool the house, and don’t use any heavy appliances [A/C, microwave, etc] during the 3-6PM period.
Interestingly, my electricity provider keeps offering to pay us $25/yr to install an internet enabled thermostat, which in the fine print allows them to “adjust” the settings. No thanks!
Q. Why do you want to ‘deliver Net Zero?’
A. Because we want to make sure that the temperature in 2100 is cooler
Q. What effect on 2100 do you think the UK will have?
A. Erm, nothing.
Q Right. Have you told everyone?
A. We have to set a lead!
Q. Which countries are following us?
Quote – “The majority of Australia’s smart meters are installed in Victoria, where the rollout to upgrade residential and small business customers to a smart meter was mandated by the Victorian government in 2008.”
https://www.energycouncil.com.au/media/lqgnfpkp/smart-meters-fact-sheet.pdf
This is wrong. Probably knowingly wrong.
State governments did NOT mandate compulsory use of smart meters. They lacked powers to do that It was a bully bluff that worked and conned most users. (My old, simple meter ticks along today).
If there was an open, honest inquiry about smart meters here in Victoria, I would not be surprised to find evidence of more fraud and profiteering. Despite several deep searches, I have been unable to find who manufactured the meters, who in Australia bought them, what their cost to the installer/supplier was, what the reselling cost to the consumer was, that is, what profit level was achieved? Was there any conflict of interest, like decision-makers feathering their personal nests?
I am concerned about these matters because of the haste of the introduction of smart meters, the opague curtain that prevented easy access to inquiring minds, the almost complete absence of any public justification (apart from usual climate change propaganda), the difficulty in getting details and so on.
Were the people the victims of a neat big stitch-up that left a few people rich beyond their dreams, for doing bugger all of value?
Geoff S
It’s my understanding that the oldseadog is right, they have to send a human out to cut off your electricity in an analog meter world. Smart meter world, the utility company can sit in an office half a world away and cut you off. Obviously, if they hack in, the Chinese, Russians, North Korea, or any enemy can do the same.
In Texas, during the freeze crisis a few years ago, the utilities picked individual houses within neighborhoods to black out for hours at a time. They left the juice on for the EMS and Fire Stations. I would not be surprised if they had AI algorithms searching databases far and wide to tell them the number and age of occupants, elderly, children under 5, medical conditions, political affiliations, connections to the rival football team, in-laws, ex-spouses, etc. Yes, in Texas, you have to submit special medical requests to the utility company explaining why you need electricity for the medical device so grandma won’t die when they want to cut off the juice.
Before the freeze, the Obama EPA demanded that all oil and gas well lifts and pumps be converted to electric instead of running on the gas from the well. The juice to the wells were cut first when the freeze came. Most of the gas wells make water which needs to be lifted so the gas can flow to the surface.The pumps that lifted the water out of the bottom of the well had no juice and did not lift, the resulting column of water in the well kept the gas from coming to the surface, which kept the gas out of the pipeline, which kept the gas out of the electrical generating plants. If the gas was already being stored in a storage cavern, there was no electricity to pump it out of the cavern and along the pipelines to the electrical generating stations. So, we were cold for a few days and a few died, a small price to pay to save the planet (sarc).
There is a simple solution to this mess. Mandate (yes I know I hate mandates) that all smart meters have a lock on them. Each consumer must be provided with a key. The purpose of the lock isn’t to keep consumers from the energy they want and need, rather it is to lock the bureaucrats and administrators from screwing with your appliances. There problem solved. It is similar to voting with your feet only now it is voting with your key. These monsters will find out soon enough who supports their ignorant policies.