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:
- Electricity consumption is going down because of rooftop solar.
- With less sales the companies have to charge existing consumers more.
- Higher prices make solar and wind power more economic.
- 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