6 ms·

The real long term idea with smart metering isn't so much demand savings (though I think it was billed as that; and I agree the results are very underwhelming f

The real long term idea with smart metering isn't so much demand savings (though I think it was billed as that; and I agree the results are very underwhelming from everything I've seen), it's to start allowing dynamic energy tariffs and getting people incentivized to move load to cheaper times. We have some of them in the UK and you can see the price differences quite clearly: https://agileprices.co.uk/ https://agileprices.co.uk/ I think the idea of having one (or maybe a crude day/night) tariff is really antiquated now when wholesale prices swing so much because of renewables. We are getting to a place where electricity is going to be free/negative a lot of the time and very much more expensive for other time slots. However, I don't know how much consumers can do about this apart from buying batteries (which is a good thing). I don't think many people will start eating their dinner 3 hours earlier or later or do washing in the middle of the night to save a few dollars here and there. I suppose AC/heating would use enough that it would be worth turning it down at certain times of day. Really where all the money to be made here is being able to get cheap industrial processes that consumer a load of electricity that can be switched on and off, so only working 25% of the time. This is hard though because there is a lot of capex (and opex) to having equipment and people sitting around doing nothing when the price is too high. But I think the energy savings will be so great there will be something that comes along for this - potentially hydrogen electrolysis.

Scoundreller 2y ago
> it's to start allowing dynamic energy tariffs and getting people incentivized to move load to cheaper times. That’s what they rolled out with them, but insufficient change to habits. > I suppose AC/heating would use enough that it would be worth turning it down at certain times of day. This is generally the big win, and why they’ve had to still create a program to subsidize smart thermostats and payments to enable the back off features. Mass installing smart meters to incentivize the public at large to buy+install smarter thermostats is a less effective and more expensive strategy than giving the thermostats away and writing users a guaranteed cheque in exchange for remotely controlling it. (There are other dynamics at play: electricity here is generally cheap and I pay more in fixed charges than consumption and the heating side is almost universally fossil fuel/wood but that’s achangin)
- IneffablePigeon 2y ago
  I think electric cars could change this equation. The savings are high enough and the inconvenience low enough.
  - caf 2y ago
    This is definitely the case - if you have a time-of-use tariff and an EV you charge at home, there's a strong incentive to schedule your charging to the cheapest time of day.
    - eru 2y ago
      Especially if your EV could be smart enough to do that by itself.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- kelnos 2y ago
  > That’s what they rolled out with them, but insufficient change to habits. If that's the case, then that means they didn't set the incentives strongly enough, or didn't educate people well enough about how they can save money. While people do grumble about their electricity bill, they might not realize that there are things they can do to reduce it. Making up numbers here, but let's say the average/"real" cost of electricity is X. To incentivize different behavior, the utility sets the price for peak hours to X+20%, and drops the price during off-peak hours to X-10%. They observe behavior for a few months. No meaningful changes in behavior. That just means people value their ability to not think about when they use electricity more than they value the cost savings. So, set the incentives harder. Set peak hours to X+60%, and off-peak to X-30%. Observe behavior for a few months. Maybe people will start changing their behavior now.
  - Spivak 2y ago
    Unless electricity is actually that much more expensive during peak you're falling into the trap of simply artificially making the world worse for the purposes of controlling people's behavior. People aren't stupid and will immediately recognize when the prices aren't connected to reality and resent you more than change their behavior for you. Most workers don't have access to cheap electricity because they're not home during the daytime hours, and setting up an elaborate series of timers is a non-solution. You'll never get people to vote for the "everyone's electric bill goes up because fuck you for having a job" bill.
kkfx 2y ago
The point is that 99% of the contracts have no "dynamic prices", they have few different tariffs established up front an year for the next. In this case you do not need a smart meter to shift load. You simply look at the "current year tariffs" and that's is. If we have dynamic prices than we need a standard data bus for every home appliance connectable to a personal automation or directly to the meter, without that manual load shifting is extremely limited. In France there is a VERY LIMITED system allow a two wire connection for big appliances were the meter simply tell "cheap or expensive" state and the appliance now that "now the electricity is cheaper, now more expensive". It's way too limited. New homes have since some years a mandatory mitering but without dynamic prices and made to be piloted and throttled loads it's just expensive eye candy stuff. Personally I have automated via HA as much as I can but such automation is essentially just switches HA can open or close via Shelly integration, there is no real smartness in all appliances even if it's damn cheap adding it from the initial design phase.
sandworm101 2y ago
>> The real long term idea with smart metering isn't so much demand savings (though I think it was billed as that; and I agree the results are very underwhelming from everything I've seen), it's to start allowing dynamic energy tariffs and getting people incentivized to move load to cheaper times. The original long/medium/short-term goal of "smart" meters was to eliminate the need to manually check meters and integrate that into the billing systems. It was a direct cost savings to delivery companies. All the fancy variable pricing stuff is an afterthought.
- Scoundreller 2y ago
  I phrase it as utilities got a gov-mandate to install you new stuff, pass on the cost to you, and save some monthly/bi-monthly opex cost that they can pocket themselves (or at least pat themselves on the back for). If it costs more than it saves, they don’t mind, actually that’s great (for them). In rural areas in Ontario, the system used 3G (and for some reason I think only supported 2G in the past) to send readings. So that will be another truck roll (or more likely, cheque to telecoms to keep up some old infra). I also suspicious of $$$ technical investments to reduce relatively small costs (especially ones where a lot of the dollars leave the area).
- mnahkies 2y ago
  It also facilitates half hourly settlement. Previously we used standard profile curves based on the average household to attribute consumption to each 30 minute settlement period, where with smart meters sending half hourly reads you can settle based on the actual consumption. The transition period includes "elective half hourly settlement" which basically means that as a supplier you can selectively settle meters on a half hourly basis, which created an interesting (but time limited) arbitrage opportunity where you could do some data science to predict which meters would be beneficial to settle half hourly or not Refs - https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-policy-and-regulation/policy-and-regulatory-programmes/electricity-settlement-reform https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-policy-and-regulation/policy... - https://www.elexon.co.uk/settlement/profiling/ https://www.elexon.co.uk/settlement/profiling/
  - 2y ago
SoftTalker 2y ago
My personal experience with "smart" thermostats is that my electric bill went up. By "smart" I just mean programmable. I had settings for morning, daytime (nobody home), evening, and night. It makes no sense but my total costs went up. This was years ago, so I don't remember exactly what temps I had set for the different times of day. Now I just set the A/C at 76 and leave it there.
- IneffablePigeon 2y ago
  With heat pumps (like AC) and condensing boilers, it is often more efficient to run for longer and slower as long as that makes your appliance run more efficiently (lower flow temperatures for heating, higher for cooling). Requires the system to support modulation though.
- otherme123 2y ago
  Let me paint you a scenario where this is possible: you leave home at 9 AM, and the A/C stops. The house slowly gets hot, maybe 95°F. You plan to arrive at 9 PM, so you program the A/C to get the house to 76°F, which the thing thinks it can do in 1 hour at full blast. But the energy price between 8 PM and 9 PM is the highest of all day: you just programmed the A/C to the worst. Instead, now you leave it keeping 76°F, and the thing can do it working at 10%. You consume more energy at the end of the day, but the consumption is spreaded through the cheapest hours in the middle of the day, and only a small fraction of it is consumed in the expensive hours from 6 to 10 PM. This is how freezers work, cooling intermitently as the thermostate goes off limits. I would test if it is worthy money wise, not energy wise, to put the A/C at full blast in the cheapest hours. Say from 4 to 6 PM (the cheapest here in Spain), to get the house as cold as possible, and then try to play with A/C at maybe 5% letting it rise until reaching 76°F at 9 PM.
  - baby_souffle 2y ago
    > I would test if it is worthy money wise, not energy wise, to put the A/C at full blast in the cheapest hours. Say from 4 to 6 PM (the cheapest here in Spain), to get the house as cold as possible, and then try to play with A/C at maybe 5% letting it rise until reaching 76°F at 9 PM. Depending on how big the house is and how well insulated it is, it very well may make for a big thermal battery and this would work well. If small and/or poorly insulated or drafty then this will not work well.
tomaskafka 2y ago
"apart from buying batteries" - that is imo precisely enough. We are nearing a time, where a battery that would flatten the avg household demand curve costs under $2000 (without installation costs), and that might be quite enough to change how electrical production works.
- martinald 2y ago
  Yes, poorly worded from me. I meant more households can't really do a huge amount about load shifting without batteries. Not that batteries are a bad idea or not workable.
- XorNot 2y ago
  If a battery could flatten demand on a household basis, then why not just implement it on a grid basis?
  - alias_neo 2y ago
    Probably for the same reason many things are the way they are; pushing the cost onto the consumer.
  - stouset 2y ago
    Spreading out the capital costs to those better able to shoulder them.
    - Thiez 2y ago
      So rich people? So they can save money while people who can't afford a battery cannot. I guess it's like this for most cost-saving investments, but doing it this way hardly contributes to a more fair society.
    - fennecbutt 2y ago
      Nah just tax the rich and make it illegal for corporations based in a tax haven (like Ireland) to do business in our economies.
  - 2y ago
caf 2y ago
Eating dinner no, but if your washing machine and dishwasher have an internal timer function (most relatively recent models of both appear to), it's pretty easy to load the appliance and tell it to turn on later that night.
petre 2y ago
> However, I don't know how much consumers can do about this apart from buying batteries If one has a water boiler or a heat pump with a buffer, they can run it at full load during cheaper periods. If they have an EV they can also charge that. The load curve is also changing with renewables. https://www.enerdynamics.com/Energy-Currents_Blog/The-Electric-Load-Curve-Once-Predictable-Now-Fickle.aspx https://www.enerdynamics.com/Energy-Currents_Blog/The-Electr...
bruce511 2y ago
I got solar last year, so ots been interesting to see how habits change (or dont). The first stuff was obvious. Our hot water and pool pump were already on timers so those were switched from night to day. Now on sunny days that's a free. We've moved the dishwasher from night to day. The washing machine was already on day, so no change there. We gave a small (5kva) battery so a chunk of our evening usage is covered. There are a few other more subtle habits, harder to spot, and perhaps with more limited gains. Some random oven usage (for not-meal things) is more likely to happen during a sunny day,that sort of thing. So yes habits have changed, and obviously our grid usage is massively reduced (by about 70%). But equally were not anal about it - things still run when they need to run. Disclaimer: this is anecdote, not data and ymmv. But saving money is a powerful motivator.
- kelnos 2y ago
  > Some random oven usage (for not-meal things) Curious: aside from running a cleaning cycle or seasoning a cast iron pan (both of which are at least meal-adjacent), what other non-meal things happen in an oven?
  - BrutalCoding 2y ago
    Reflowing PCB’s is one thing I can think of.
    - jstanley 2y ago
      Drying out 3d printer filament is another. Also heating up engine casings to get bearings in/out.
    - alias_neo 2y ago
      Drying 3D printer filament too (though I've not tried it myself and not sure I'd want to use my ovens for that).
  - Perz1val 2y ago
    I interpreted "non-meal" as anything except breakfast, dinner, supper. Like a cake
consp 2y ago
> or do washing in the middle of the night With dynamic tarrifs around here you sometimes make money by doing it during the day, especially on sunny windy days as you get money back for using electricity at that time. My bill is about two thirds of what it would be otherwise (since I cannot install solar panels or batteries it's the only way to have any advantage). I've automated it so it picks up if the prices goes below a certain set amount, though that's not for everyone. Btw my parents have been doing off hour washing since the nineties (we've had double meters for a long time). It's nothing new.

Scoundreller 2y ago

> it's to start allowing dynamic energy tariffs and getting people incentivized to move load to cheaper times. That’s what they rolled out with them, but insufficient change to habits. > I suppose AC/heating would use enough that it would be worth turning it down at certain times of day. This is generally the big win, and why they’ve had to still create a program to subsidize smart thermostats and payments to enable the back off features. Mass installing smart meters to incentivize the public at large to buy+install smarter thermostats is a less effective and more expensive strategy than giving the thermostats away and writing users a guaranteed cheque in exchange for remotely controlling it. (There are other dynamics at play: electricity here is generally cheap and I pay more in fixed charges than consumption and the heating side is almost universally fossil fuel/wood but that’s achangin)

IneffablePigeon 2y ago
I think electric cars could change this equation. The savings are high enough and the inconvenience low enough.
- caf 2y ago
  This is definitely the case - if you have a time-of-use tariff and an EV you charge at home, there's a strong incentive to schedule your charging to the cheapest time of day.
  - eru 2y ago
    Especially if your EV could be smart enough to do that by itself.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
kelnos 2y ago
> That’s what they rolled out with them, but insufficient change to habits. If that's the case, then that means they didn't set the incentives strongly enough, or didn't educate people well enough about how they can save money. While people do grumble about their electricity bill, they might not realize that there are things they can do to reduce it. Making up numbers here, but let's say the average/"real" cost of electricity is X. To incentivize different behavior, the utility sets the price for peak hours to X+20%, and drops the price during off-peak hours to X-10%. They observe behavior for a few months. No meaningful changes in behavior. That just means people value their ability to not think about when they use electricity more than they value the cost savings. So, set the incentives harder. Set peak hours to X+60%, and off-peak to X-30%. Observe behavior for a few months. Maybe people will start changing their behavior now.
- Spivak 2y ago
  Unless electricity is actually that much more expensive during peak you're falling into the trap of simply artificially making the world worse for the purposes of controlling people's behavior. People aren't stupid and will immediately recognize when the prices aren't connected to reality and resent you more than change their behavior for you. Most workers don't have access to cheap electricity because they're not home during the daytime hours, and setting up an elaborate series of timers is a non-solution. You'll never get people to vote for the "everyone's electric bill goes up because fuck you for having a job" bill.

kkfx 2y ago

The point is that 99% of the contracts have no "dynamic prices", they have few different tariffs established up front an year for the next. In this case you do not need a smart meter to shift load. You simply look at the "current year tariffs" and that's is. If we have dynamic prices than we need a standard data bus for every home appliance connectable to a personal automation or directly to the meter, without that manual load shifting is extremely limited. In France there is a VERY LIMITED system allow a two wire connection for big appliances were the meter simply tell "cheap or expensive" state and the appliance now that "now the electricity is cheaper, now more expensive". It's way too limited. New homes have since some years a mandatory mitering but without dynamic prices and made to be piloted and throttled loads it's just expensive eye candy stuff. Personally I have automated via HA as much as I can but such automation is essentially just switches HA can open or close via Shelly integration, there is no real smartness in all appliances even if it's damn cheap adding it from the initial design phase.

sandworm101 2y ago

>> The real long term idea with smart metering isn't so much demand savings (though I think it was billed as that; and I agree the results are very underwhelming from everything I've seen), it's to start allowing dynamic energy tariffs and getting people incentivized to move load to cheaper times. The original long/medium/short-term goal of "smart" meters was to eliminate the need to manually check meters and integrate that into the billing systems. It was a direct cost savings to delivery companies. All the fancy variable pricing stuff is an afterthought.

Scoundreller 2y ago
I phrase it as utilities got a gov-mandate to install you new stuff, pass on the cost to you, and save some monthly/bi-monthly opex cost that they can pocket themselves (or at least pat themselves on the back for). If it costs more than it saves, they don’t mind, actually that’s great (for them). In rural areas in Ontario, the system used 3G (and for some reason I think only supported 2G in the past) to send readings. So that will be another truck roll (or more likely, cheque to telecoms to keep up some old infra). I also suspicious of $$$ technical investments to reduce relatively small costs (especially ones where a lot of the dollars leave the area).
mnahkies 2y ago
It also facilitates half hourly settlement. Previously we used standard profile curves based on the average household to attribute consumption to each 30 minute settlement period, where with smart meters sending half hourly reads you can settle based on the actual consumption. The transition period includes "elective half hourly settlement" which basically means that as a supplier you can selectively settle meters on a half hourly basis, which created an interesting (but time limited) arbitrage opportunity where you could do some data science to predict which meters would be beneficial to settle half hourly or not Refs - https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-policy-and-regulation/policy-and-regulatory-programmes/electricity-settlement-reform https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-policy-and-regulation/policy... - https://www.elexon.co.uk/settlement/profiling/ https://www.elexon.co.uk/settlement/profiling/
- 2y ago

SoftTalker 2y ago

My personal experience with "smart" thermostats is that my electric bill went up. By "smart" I just mean programmable. I had settings for morning, daytime (nobody home), evening, and night. It makes no sense but my total costs went up. This was years ago, so I don't remember exactly what temps I had set for the different times of day. Now I just set the A/C at 76 and leave it there.

IneffablePigeon 2y ago
With heat pumps (like AC) and condensing boilers, it is often more efficient to run for longer and slower as long as that makes your appliance run more efficiently (lower flow temperatures for heating, higher for cooling). Requires the system to support modulation though.
otherme123 2y ago
Let me paint you a scenario where this is possible: you leave home at 9 AM, and the A/C stops. The house slowly gets hot, maybe 95°F. You plan to arrive at 9 PM, so you program the A/C to get the house to 76°F, which the thing thinks it can do in 1 hour at full blast. But the energy price between 8 PM and 9 PM is the highest of all day: you just programmed the A/C to the worst. Instead, now you leave it keeping 76°F, and the thing can do it working at 10%. You consume more energy at the end of the day, but the consumption is spreaded through the cheapest hours in the middle of the day, and only a small fraction of it is consumed in the expensive hours from 6 to 10 PM. This is how freezers work, cooling intermitently as the thermostate goes off limits. I would test if it is worthy money wise, not energy wise, to put the A/C at full blast in the cheapest hours. Say from 4 to 6 PM (the cheapest here in Spain), to get the house as cold as possible, and then try to play with A/C at maybe 5% letting it rise until reaching 76°F at 9 PM.
- baby_souffle 2y ago
  > I would test if it is worthy money wise, not energy wise, to put the A/C at full blast in the cheapest hours. Say from 4 to 6 PM (the cheapest here in Spain), to get the house as cold as possible, and then try to play with A/C at maybe 5% letting it rise until reaching 76°F at 9 PM. Depending on how big the house is and how well insulated it is, it very well may make for a big thermal battery and this would work well. If small and/or poorly insulated or drafty then this will not work well.

tomaskafka 2y ago

"apart from buying batteries" - that is imo precisely enough. We are nearing a time, where a battery that would flatten the avg household demand curve costs under $2000 (without installation costs), and that might be quite enough to change how electrical production works.

martinald 2y ago
Yes, poorly worded from me. I meant more households can't really do a huge amount about load shifting without batteries. Not that batteries are a bad idea or not workable.
XorNot 2y ago
If a battery could flatten demand on a household basis, then why not just implement it on a grid basis?
- alias_neo 2y ago
  Probably for the same reason many things are the way they are; pushing the cost onto the consumer.
- stouset 2y ago
  Spreading out the capital costs to those better able to shoulder them.
  - Thiez 2y ago
    So rich people? So they can save money while people who can't afford a battery cannot. I guess it's like this for most cost-saving investments, but doing it this way hardly contributes to a more fair society.
  - fennecbutt 2y ago
    Nah just tax the rich and make it illegal for corporations based in a tax haven (like Ireland) to do business in our economies.
- 2y ago

caf 2y ago

Eating dinner no, but if your washing machine and dishwasher have an internal timer function (most relatively recent models of both appear to), it's pretty easy to load the appliance and tell it to turn on later that night.

petre 2y ago

> However, I don't know how much consumers can do about this apart from buying batteries If one has a water boiler or a heat pump with a buffer, they can run it at full load during cheaper periods. If they have an EV they can also charge that. The load curve is also changing with renewables. https://www.enerdynamics.com/Energy-Currents_Blog/The-Electric-Load-Curve-Once-Predictable-Now-Fickle.aspx https://www.enerdynamics.com/Energy-Currents_Blog/The-Electr...

bruce511 2y ago

I got solar last year, so ots been interesting to see how habits change (or dont). The first stuff was obvious. Our hot water and pool pump were already on timers so those were switched from night to day. Now on sunny days that's a free. We've moved the dishwasher from night to day. The washing machine was already on day, so no change there. We gave a small (5kva) battery so a chunk of our evening usage is covered. There are a few other more subtle habits, harder to spot, and perhaps with more limited gains. Some random oven usage (for not-meal things) is more likely to happen during a sunny day,that sort of thing. So yes habits have changed, and obviously our grid usage is massively reduced (by about 70%). But equally were not anal about it - things still run when they need to run. Disclaimer: this is anecdote, not data and ymmv. But saving money is a powerful motivator.

kelnos 2y ago
> Some random oven usage (for not-meal things) Curious: aside from running a cleaning cycle or seasoning a cast iron pan (both of which are at least meal-adjacent), what other non-meal things happen in an oven?
- BrutalCoding 2y ago
  Reflowing PCB’s is one thing I can think of.
  - jstanley 2y ago
    Drying out 3d printer filament is another. Also heating up engine casings to get bearings in/out.
  - alias_neo 2y ago
    Drying 3D printer filament too (though I've not tried it myself and not sure I'd want to use my ovens for that).
- Perz1val 2y ago
  I interpreted "non-meal" as anything except breakfast, dinner, supper. Like a cake

consp 2y ago

> or do washing in the middle of the night With dynamic tarrifs around here you sometimes make money by doing it during the day, especially on sunny windy days as you get money back for using electricity at that time. My bill is about two thirds of what it would be otherwise (since I cannot install solar panels or batteries it's the only way to have any advantage). I've automated it so it picks up if the prices goes below a certain set amount, though that's not for everyone. Btw my parents have been doing off hour washing since the nineties (we've had double meters for a long time). It's nothing new.