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Commercial energy broker here - the only 2 'real' costs in your price are the wholesale and supplier costs. Choose suppliers that offer a fully-fixed electricit

Commercial energy broker here - the only 2 'real' costs in your price are the wholesale and supplier costs. Choose suppliers that offer a fully-fixed electricity contract, so that made up variable costs such as distribution, network, etc are all factored into the unit rate that the supplier charges you for your contract. Avoid smart meters at all costs. Renewable / green contracts are always a lot more expensive than standard contracts. I help businesses across the UK get the lowest rates in the market, if it's something you need help with reach out to me - yousaveutilities.co.uk

gnrl 2y ago
What's the reason to avoid smart meters?
- oceanplexian 2y ago
  The security is broken and it broadcasts your information in the clear. I set up a RTLSDR plugged into my laptop in my kitchen and was able to read the energy utilization of my entire neighborhood after about 10min of work.
  - benj111 2y ago
    what information is it actually leaking though? If someone wanted, they could drive up to my house and see the colour of my door. The fact that someone has always been able to create a database of front door colours isn't inherently a data leak. A UUID and electricity usage for the past half hour for a house in the general vicinity isn't useful. Even if you could put a name to that UUID, I struggle to think of how that would be a major issue. Especially considering with a thermal camera, and assuming construction details from the age and type of the house, you could already estimate your neighbours energy usage anyway. Remote shutoff on the other hand....
    - krisoft 2y ago
      Could you perhaps use it to monitor which houses are unoccupied?
  - KaiserPro 2y ago
    > The security is broken and it broadcasts your information in the clear. I set up a RTLSDR plugged into my laptop in my kitchen and was able to read the energy utilization of my entire neighborhood after about 10min of work. In America, yes. Here the meter->gateway is encrypted zigbee, the gateway is over 3/4g. However the remote contactor is more of an issue. You can be turned off remotely without much ceremony.
    - dfawcus 2y ago
      Where does "here" mean. In the UK only "central" England and south transmits data over the mobile network. In northern England and Scotland, the data is transmitted over UHF radio.
      - KaiserPro 2y ago
        Sorry yes, I should have been more specific. The important thing is that it is reasonably well encrypted. Its not like the USA where they just yeet it in the clear for all to see. The downside is that the non cellular backhaul is provided by arquiva, who are shits.
- dfawcus 2y ago
  Because they're designed for demand side load shedding. Also to enable "surge pricing" such that folks ration of disconnect themselves, rather than pay the surge price. Other than that, they don't really have a benefit for the user, the details one variable use could simply be monitored by manual reading on a weekly basis.
- lizzas 2y ago
  Get a solar system and it can run the meter in reverse. Which is cool!
vel0city 2y ago
> Avoid smart meters at all costs I don't mind smart meters; it's nice getting the metrics and data from them. I do avoid variable rate billing though.
- hagbard_c 2y ago
  Variable billing can save you a lot of money, especially if you have your own generation capacity - PV panels, wind/water turbine etc - by making it possible to schedule maximum use during low-price (usually during the night, sometimes in the middle of the day) while minimising use during the morning and afternoon peaks. Play this right and you'll end up with negative electricity bills (in regions where small-scale producers can sell to the market, Sweden being an example of such). Contracts often stipulate that small-scale producers can not produce more kWh than they consume. By scheduling consumption so that it either falls during times of excess own production - which makes it possible to avoid paying energy taxes and transport charges or when the market rates are the lowest you end up with as low a bill as possible. At the same time you can decide to export power to the network when you happen to have excess capacity at high-price moments thereby maximising income from electricity sales. Play this right and you'll end up with net-negative electricity bills even while producing no more kWh than you consume.
- philjohn 2y ago
  I'd look more into it - Octopus Agile can save you a heap of money, doubly so if you have Solar + Battery so can more effectively load balance. And Intelligent Octopus Go is a variable rate - 7p 23:30-05:30 (and any time during the day your EV is plugged in and there's a glut of green cheap energy on the grid).
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
AnotherGoodName 2y ago
Variable rate smart billing can be amazing if you have the right setup though! Eg. An electric car that can do V2G with the following; Power to the grid when Rate > Y and carCharge > 50% Charge the car when Rate < X. There's various posts on electric car groups where people have the above setup and pull in ridiculous profits. Your typical electric car can output power for a very long time during the ridiculous 10000% price hikes and on the flipside when the price occasionally hits ~0 charging is basically free. If you have some system of power storage variable rate can make you money. https://thedriven.io/2024/02/27/australian-evs-could-earn-12000-in-a-single-year-with-vehicle-to-grid-tech/ https://thedriven.io/2024/02/27/australian-evs-could-earn-12...
- vel0city 2y ago
  And then you get some big energy dry spell and rates go to 1,000x their normal price and it starts costing you $20 to run the kettle for a few minutes. Hopefully you noticed that spike in prices ahead of time!
  - AnotherGoodName 2y ago
    The fixed rates that companies charge just smooth out these variances since they all pay a variable rate behind the scenes. The fixed rate providers will do rolling brownouts if the grid gets to this state to save themselves from ruin. If you're on a variable rate you can choose to cut yourself off in these periods. Essentially the downside you mention is worse on the fixed rate: On fixed rate you'll have no power at all - the fixed rate providers will cut power completely to protect themselves financially if the grid is in a prolonged period of extreme price (they did this in Texas). On a variable rate you can choose to cut yourself off or not.
    - vel0city 2y ago
      > they did this in Texas That is not what happened in Texas. The REPs had zero say to do a rolling brownout. "Rolling" outages which became semi-permanent outages were done by the delivery companies, not the retail providers. Retail providers can't just choose to stop selling me electricity for a few hours because they think it's too unprofitable for them, that's not allowed in the contract. My REP at the time probably had some massive costs due to customers like me which didn't lose power; they folded and sold the contract to another company. > On a variable rate you can choose to cut yourself off or not. Once again, you clearly don't know what actually happened in Texas. Several people I know on variable rate plans lost power for days. But hey keep speaking falsehoods instead of actually learning what happened.
longwave 2y ago
This smells like an advert. Over the last year I've spent less money on energy by being on Octopus Tracker (which requires a smart meter) over any fixed tariff.
- switch007 2y ago
  Many have also not and are switching away from Agile. It hit £1 a couple of weeks ago. Ouch It's cheap if you use the majority of your energy in the wee hours right?
doctorpangloss 2y ago
This is a deeply flawed but empathetic point of view. Sure, maybe the big bad smart meters are secretly conspiring against you. If things were so simple, why doesn’t someone in the government just negotiate a simple price for everyone? Why have middlemen like you at all?
KaiserPro 2y ago
Disclosure: I have a house battery. over the last three months, I've been paying on average 16p a unit. Thats with a car as well. On the days in the winter when solar isn't doing shit, we top up at the lowest price that day. This kinda goes to the articles point which is to you can avoid, or limit the peak with local storage. The issue with the battery is that its costs a shit tonne. a basic battery is going to cost something like £8k installed. Its almost certainly cheaper to upgrade the grid compared to adding batteries to a million households. Especially as the lifespan of batteries isn't that long compared to the super grid.
- Nextgrid 2y ago
  The unsaid, "quiet part" about batteries is that they're a fire hazard. No matter how "safe" they are branded as, the failure mode is disastrous and life-threatening when they do fail. It's insane that those things are being sold and installed in homes at all. But then again this is in a country where installing solar power inverters in the attic of wooden houses was also a thing (no surprises as to what the outcome of a failure would be). Proper solution is to pool them in a dedicated buildings so you still get the benefit of locality at the neighborhood level while containing the consequences of a failure and limiting them to property damage (vs potential loss of life), but that would use up land that can otherwise be used as a way to (literally) seek rent, so it cannot happen.
  - KaiserPro 2y ago
    > about batteries is that they're a fire hazard. yes, although they are statistically much safer than fridges, or combined washer driers. (unless you include cheap e-bikes or hoverboards...) I don't have mine inside the house, its very much outside with a wooden lintel supporting a surprisingly sandy flower trough. I also have micro inverters, because they are more efficient, and less fucking noisy. They are also, as you hint at, much safer. Partly because they are not switching ~400v DC but also because they don't need to handle as much power.
  - rcxdude 2y ago
    As fire risks go, house batteries are pretty low on the list. You're much more likely to have a catasrophic fire from charging one of the many battery-powered gadgets that people have nowawdays (especially cheap low-quality ones!).
philjohn 2y ago
Sorry, but this feels entirely wrong. If I didn't have a smart meter my levellised cost of energy wouldn't be negative like it is now (EV tariff + Solar + Battery).

gnrl 2y ago

What's the reason to avoid smart meters?

oceanplexian 2y ago
The security is broken and it broadcasts your information in the clear. I set up a RTLSDR plugged into my laptop in my kitchen and was able to read the energy utilization of my entire neighborhood after about 10min of work.
- benj111 2y ago
  what information is it actually leaking though? If someone wanted, they could drive up to my house and see the colour of my door. The fact that someone has always been able to create a database of front door colours isn't inherently a data leak. A UUID and electricity usage for the past half hour for a house in the general vicinity isn't useful. Even if you could put a name to that UUID, I struggle to think of how that would be a major issue. Especially considering with a thermal camera, and assuming construction details from the age and type of the house, you could already estimate your neighbours energy usage anyway. Remote shutoff on the other hand....
  - krisoft 2y ago
    Could you perhaps use it to monitor which houses are unoccupied?
- KaiserPro 2y ago
  > The security is broken and it broadcasts your information in the clear. I set up a RTLSDR plugged into my laptop in my kitchen and was able to read the energy utilization of my entire neighborhood after about 10min of work. In America, yes. Here the meter->gateway is encrypted zigbee, the gateway is over 3/4g. However the remote contactor is more of an issue. You can be turned off remotely without much ceremony.
  - dfawcus 2y ago
    Where does "here" mean. In the UK only "central" England and south transmits data over the mobile network. In northern England and Scotland, the data is transmitted over UHF radio.
    - KaiserPro 2y ago
      Sorry yes, I should have been more specific. The important thing is that it is reasonably well encrypted. Its not like the USA where they just yeet it in the clear for all to see. The downside is that the non cellular backhaul is provided by arquiva, who are shits.
dfawcus 2y ago
Because they're designed for demand side load shedding. Also to enable "surge pricing" such that folks ration of disconnect themselves, rather than pay the surge price. Other than that, they don't really have a benefit for the user, the details one variable use could simply be monitored by manual reading on a weekly basis.
lizzas 2y ago
Get a solar system and it can run the meter in reverse. Which is cool!

vel0city 2y ago

> Avoid smart meters at all costs I don't mind smart meters; it's nice getting the metrics and data from them. I do avoid variable rate billing though.

hagbard_c 2y ago
Variable billing can save you a lot of money, especially if you have your own generation capacity - PV panels, wind/water turbine etc - by making it possible to schedule maximum use during low-price (usually during the night, sometimes in the middle of the day) while minimising use during the morning and afternoon peaks. Play this right and you'll end up with negative electricity bills (in regions where small-scale producers can sell to the market, Sweden being an example of such). Contracts often stipulate that small-scale producers can not produce more kWh than they consume. By scheduling consumption so that it either falls during times of excess own production - which makes it possible to avoid paying energy taxes and transport charges or when the market rates are the lowest you end up with as low a bill as possible. At the same time you can decide to export power to the network when you happen to have excess capacity at high-price moments thereby maximising income from electricity sales. Play this right and you'll end up with net-negative electricity bills even while producing no more kWh than you consume.
philjohn 2y ago
I'd look more into it - Octopus Agile can save you a heap of money, doubly so if you have Solar + Battery so can more effectively load balance. And Intelligent Octopus Go is a variable rate - 7p 23:30-05:30 (and any time during the day your EV is plugged in and there's a glut of green cheap energy on the grid).

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

AnotherGoodName 2y ago

Variable rate smart billing can be amazing if you have the right setup though! Eg. An electric car that can do V2G with the following; Power to the grid when Rate > Y and carCharge > 50% Charge the car when Rate < X. There's various posts on electric car groups where people have the above setup and pull in ridiculous profits. Your typical electric car can output power for a very long time during the ridiculous 10000% price hikes and on the flipside when the price occasionally hits ~0 charging is basically free. If you have some system of power storage variable rate can make you money. https://thedriven.io/2024/02/27/australian-evs-could-earn-12000-in-a-single-year-with-vehicle-to-grid-tech/ https://thedriven.io/2024/02/27/australian-evs-could-earn-12...

vel0city 2y ago
And then you get some big energy dry spell and rates go to 1,000x their normal price and it starts costing you $20 to run the kettle for a few minutes. Hopefully you noticed that spike in prices ahead of time!
- AnotherGoodName 2y ago
  The fixed rates that companies charge just smooth out these variances since they all pay a variable rate behind the scenes. The fixed rate providers will do rolling brownouts if the grid gets to this state to save themselves from ruin. If you're on a variable rate you can choose to cut yourself off in these periods. Essentially the downside you mention is worse on the fixed rate: On fixed rate you'll have no power at all - the fixed rate providers will cut power completely to protect themselves financially if the grid is in a prolonged period of extreme price (they did this in Texas). On a variable rate you can choose to cut yourself off or not.
  - vel0city 2y ago
    > they did this in Texas That is not what happened in Texas. The REPs had zero say to do a rolling brownout. "Rolling" outages which became semi-permanent outages were done by the delivery companies, not the retail providers. Retail providers can't just choose to stop selling me electricity for a few hours because they think it's too unprofitable for them, that's not allowed in the contract. My REP at the time probably had some massive costs due to customers like me which didn't lose power; they folded and sold the contract to another company. > On a variable rate you can choose to cut yourself off or not. Once again, you clearly don't know what actually happened in Texas. Several people I know on variable rate plans lost power for days. But hey keep speaking falsehoods instead of actually learning what happened.

longwave 2y ago

This smells like an advert. Over the last year I've spent less money on energy by being on Octopus Tracker (which requires a smart meter) over any fixed tariff.

switch007 2y ago
Many have also not and are switching away from Agile. It hit £1 a couple of weeks ago. Ouch It's cheap if you use the majority of your energy in the wee hours right?

doctorpangloss 2y ago

This is a deeply flawed but empathetic point of view. Sure, maybe the big bad smart meters are secretly conspiring against you. If things were so simple, why doesn’t someone in the government just negotiate a simple price for everyone? Why have middlemen like you at all?

KaiserPro 2y ago

Disclosure: I have a house battery. over the last three months, I've been paying on average 16p a unit. Thats with a car as well. On the days in the winter when solar isn't doing shit, we top up at the lowest price that day. This kinda goes to the articles point which is to you can avoid, or limit the peak with local storage. The issue with the battery is that its costs a shit tonne. a basic battery is going to cost something like £8k installed. Its almost certainly cheaper to upgrade the grid compared to adding batteries to a million households. Especially as the lifespan of batteries isn't that long compared to the super grid.

Nextgrid 2y ago
The unsaid, "quiet part" about batteries is that they're a fire hazard. No matter how "safe" they are branded as, the failure mode is disastrous and life-threatening when they do fail. It's insane that those things are being sold and installed in homes at all. But then again this is in a country where installing solar power inverters in the attic of wooden houses was also a thing (no surprises as to what the outcome of a failure would be). Proper solution is to pool them in a dedicated buildings so you still get the benefit of locality at the neighborhood level while containing the consequences of a failure and limiting them to property damage (vs potential loss of life), but that would use up land that can otherwise be used as a way to (literally) seek rent, so it cannot happen.
- KaiserPro 2y ago
  > about batteries is that they're a fire hazard. yes, although they are statistically much safer than fridges, or combined washer driers. (unless you include cheap e-bikes or hoverboards...) I don't have mine inside the house, its very much outside with a wooden lintel supporting a surprisingly sandy flower trough. I also have micro inverters, because they are more efficient, and less fucking noisy. They are also, as you hint at, much safer. Partly because they are not switching ~400v DC but also because they don't need to handle as much power.
- rcxdude 2y ago
  As fire risks go, house batteries are pretty low on the list. You're much more likely to have a catasrophic fire from charging one of the many battery-powered gadgets that people have nowawdays (especially cheap low-quality ones!).

philjohn 2y ago

Sorry, but this feels entirely wrong. If I didn't have a smart meter my levellised cost of energy wouldn't be negative like it is now (EV tariff + Solar + Battery).