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12-10-2018, 03:10 AM
1

Providers WON'T Install Smart Meters

Electricity distributors are refusing to install smart meters at consumers premises. If you have solar panels on your roof you need a smart meter to be able to sell power back to the grid.

With the proliferation of solar panels on private houses not to mention consumers who have purposely gone for massive solar systems on their roof specifically to sell power back to the grid the power distribution model is broken:

  1. Electricity consumption is going down because of rooftop solar.
  2. With less sales the companies have to charge existing consumers more.
  3. Higher prices make solar and wind power more economic.
  4. Electricity retailers enter a death spiral.

So electricity retailers are refusing to install smart meters when customers request them.

Solar is causing other problems on a system designed to be fed from a central location and distributed on a network. The network is not designed to have power fed into from different parts of the network. To feed power into the network the feed in voltage must be higher than the network voltage - that is fine when there are only a few houses with solar panels but get a cluster of them then the mains voltage can rise to the point where it can damage domestic equipment. Again the voltage controls are not designed to cope with higher voltages at the consumer end of the network.

There have been a number of solar users who have had them selves disconnected from the supply because of dangerously high mains voltages.

Personally I just hope battery prices drop dramatically in price because I would forgo the solar panels and use the very cheap off peak power to charge the batteries at night then use the batteries to power the house during the day
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12-10-2018, 03:27 AM
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Re: Providers WON'T Install Smart Meters

I wish we had enough sunshine to make this a viable option. I thought the panels only lasted ten year - or has that changed?
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12-10-2018, 09:41 AM
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Re: Providers WON'T Install Smart Meters

Annie we do have enough sun to do that, I know several people locally pay very little for their electric because their excess is sold back to the grid.

Living in a flat we can't have either solar panels or smart meters
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12-10-2018, 12:01 PM
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Re: Providers WON'T Install Smart Meters

I don't want a smart meter, but I'd have a solar panel if it were cost effective. As I understand it they cost £10k and you had to replace them every ten years or so. AT the time I looked into it the special metal needed was only available in China. I'm not sure if the technology has since changed to make it cheaper than electricity.
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12-10-2018, 01:33 PM
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Re: Providers WON'T Install Smart Meters

Where we live solar panels have become increasingly popular. We even have solar farms near us.



We also use windmills and there’s quite a bit of controversy about them

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12-10-2018, 01:36 PM
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Re: Providers WON'T Install Smart Meters

There's a lot of controversy here too personally I find them beautiful, really elegant and graceful.
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12-10-2018, 01:48 PM
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Re: Providers WON'T Install Smart Meters

Originally Posted by Julie1962 ->
There's a lot of controversy here too personally I find them beautiful, really elegant and graceful.
I do also Julie. There’s something really appealing about them. The other day on the way up to my parents house it was really foggy and you could see the bottom of the windmills but not the top and they looked amazing. I just wish I could have convinced my husband to stop to let me take a pic but no.

Anyway back to solar panels. We are considering getting some now that the battery prices have dropped.
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12-10-2018, 11:13 PM
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Re: Providers WON'T Install Smart Meters

Originally Posted by AnnieS ->
I wish we had enough sunshine to make this a viable option. I thought the panels only lasted ten year - or has that changed?
You do have enough sun. There are charts which show 'sun hours' (or some such expression) for various latitudes and further from the equator you have less intense sun BUT you have it for longer. Obviously your panels have to be at a steeper angle than here.

I believe that panels do lose effectiveness over time but their cost is coming down all the time so that is less of an issue. As I understand it they lose 1% efficiency per year and are covered by a 20 year warranty.

My experience with them is limited to my car where I have 100watt panel on the car roof for my aux battery and when my car and/or camper is not being used I plug in a 40 watt panel to each to keep the batteries topped up. Those panels just lie on the car port roof (ie virtually horizontal) but provide enough power to keep all the batteries topped up nicely.

BTW the 100 watt panel on the car roof combined with the 120A/H AGM aux battery is sufficient to run my travelling fridge indefinitely without mains power - though it has to be said the aux battery is also charged from the engine but I have been several days without running it while using the fridge..
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12-10-2018, 11:19 PM
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Re: Providers WON'T Install Smart Meters

from what i understand here in the UK, if you change company suppliers you also have to have the smart meters changed at your cost. We wouldn't have them , too easy for suppliers to alter tarriffs according to demand.
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13-10-2018, 04:00 PM
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Re: Providers WON'T Install Smart Meters

Originally Posted by Bruce ->
Personally I just hope battery prices drop dramatically in price because I would forgo the solar panels and use the very cheap off peak power to charge the batteries at night then use the batteries to power the house during the day
That makes no sense.

I would HAVE the solar panels and use their FREE energy to charge the batteries during the day so that there was energy available during the night.

That's the perfect model imho but naturally here in the UK you will NOT find a "free" rent a roof solar panel supplier willing to install panels AND give you a battery solution.
All they want is to rent your roof, give you free panels so that THEY can get all the Feed In Tariff revenue rather than you.

Given that Smart Meters are there to provide the platform for VARIABLE RATE BILLING (which will ultimately double or triple people's energy bills) it's clear that they don't want people getting self sufficient with solar panels. The whole idea of ECO green energy is an illusion. Neither the governments or energy moguls want us to have it as it means a MASSIVE loss of revenue for them.

Getting off grid as far as possible is the obvious way to go for the dire future that awaits us.
 
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