Banner
any day today rss X

News and Comment September 2020

Index: 2009201020112012201320142015201620172018201920202021202220232024

21 September - Not as Smart as they think

Smart metersIt’s not only on Covid19 that the newspapers are full of scare stories. Just a couple of days ago they were telling us that the energy companies are planning to remotely close down any household devices that use a lot of electricity. Car chargers (32 amps) and heat pumps, the favoured replacement for gas boilers.

Heat pumps are a sort of reverse refrigerator. Powerful compressors use a lot of electricity but can push three times as much back into your radiators. That’s the theory anyway and a friend who has one seems to be happy with his.

But the newspapers are asking where the electricity is coming from. The National Grid says there is plenty available but it might be necessary to smooth out demand a bit.

A year ago I was asked to trial the rationing system known as Flexible Responsive Energy Delivery but I declined. I didn’t think my electricity use was anywhere near typical.

In theory it can switch off car battery charging as described in the Telegraph article last Saturday. In practice it can’t, at least not for now. All you have to do is pull the Cat5 cable from the router. Job done.

Presumably in due course such systems will work via the mobile telephone network. How much does a decent Faraday cage cost?

A better way of smoothing electricity demand is to use batteries and that is already being done to some extent in the UK and on a much bigger scale where they can be more reliably charged from solar energy. Australia is the most quoted example.

When electric cars are widespread big batteries will be ubiquitous and the technology already exists to let them power your house. The Japanese charging protocols allowed for it but unfortunately the EU standard which is a loosely designed mess doesn’t, but there are sure to be revisions to the standards before too long.

Unfortunately if the Loon of London gets his way we won’t have cars and bike batteries probably won’t run a kettle for long. Politicians and joined up thinking? There’s a non-sequitur if ever there was one.

 

Return to the top of this page
Bonkers is a cookie free zone. Not a single one