Thread: smart meter electricity?

Originally Posted by DEFENDERZOOK

its just the greed engineers way of making more money for the energy companies.......

and a clever way it is too.......they are probably charging more for electricity during the day when its most required.......
by everyone......including mainly businesses.......to run office lights and computers....copiers....printers.....AIR CONDITIONING.......escalators.....
elevators......


im sure you get the idea........


you have no choice but to use the energy during the day........

at night....when most people are sleeping......the energy companies arent making much money........
so they plan to sell more energy by forcing the households to run their electrical equipment during this time........


all this means......is that there will always be some sort of constant humming background noise all through the night......

then.....at 2:30 in the morning....your next door neighbour will start to vacuum the house to save money........
while the other neighbour is running their dishwasher and washing machine......
while they blow dry their hair at the same time.........

this also means.....they will have their lights on.......
and my pool pump will be running all night instead of during the day.......




do you think there will be less rest......and more stress......?
as if 7 day trading wasnt bad enough.......

We always ran the pool filter at night, set the dishwasher to run as we went to bed, and the washing ran on timer overnight....

Our Spa pump does it work at night

And depnding on shift, sometimes 2am is our 5pm

And if you think a suburban area is quiet at night your kidding arent you!!!!

well.....as quiet as it gets......

Originally Posted by abaddonxi

Umm, electricity doesn't store very well.

We have to have enough generators to fulfill peak demand.

If peak demand grows we have to build more generators.

If we can move peak demand to other times of the day we can better utilise the generators that we have and achieve economies of scale - most generators don't get turned off if there is no demand.

Just a way of trying not to build more generators.

Cheers
Simon

I dunno what the go is down south, but up here in banana-bending country the power company pumps water uphill at night and lets it run down through turbines during the day just to even the demand cycle. It takes something like 1-2 hours to spool the generators up or down and they are much more efficient just left to run. With the proliferation of airconditioners consumers are using more power than ever before, most of it in the peak industrial use time of the middle of the day. Smart meters make sense to me.

Finally, a use for the delay timer on the washing machine

Jeez, the (NSW) peak rate is gunna be high!

Peak 2pm-8pm on working weekdays
from 12.8700 c/kwh
to 27.6100 c/kwh

One of the reasons:

Increased usage of appliances such as reverse cycle air conditioners and the use of more and bigger electrical appliances in people’s homes together with increased business demand is driving this trend

(My emphasis).

When one looks at the design of many modern homes, it's obvious they aren't designed for the Aussie climate - no eaves so there is no shade, and big windows. This means the house will need air conditioning. The lack of eaves means a bigger house on the new smaller blocks of land

Older homes with smaller windows and verandahs or wide eaves have the windows in shade for a lot of the day.

You won't be able to afford to user your aircon anymore!

Funnily enough, my old County didn't get as hot as my Rangie and they are both white. Why? Vertical glass all 'round and a very shallow dashboard top. On our P38A and Suby Forester, the broad expanse of dash top gets extremely hot in the sun and the radiant heat reflects off the windscreen ontot he front passengers. We now direct the cold air at the screen to cool it and the dash. Directing the airvents to the pax just isn't very effective.

what about using some of those plug in wall timers ?

i.e for the washing ....throw your clothes and the soap in ...set the timer to start at say, 2 am. Could do the same with the dishwasher

I guesss machines with built in timers and combined washer/dryers will become more common.

Edit : oops Scrambler already suggested that, sorry mate.

..I can see some dude coming up with a device that links the smart meter to the appliances i.e. turns them on when power charge is at its lowest.

...as for aircons, I suppose we'll see more use of evap. cooling. Ours consumes about 100Watts of power, about the same as a light bulb. Conceivably you could run these off solar panels ( which works well cause you want the cooling on when the sun is at it's maximum ). The evap coolers use a fair bit of water of course, but if you have rainwater tanks, that helps out there.

Originally Posted by waynep

what about using some of those plug in wall timers ?


...as for aircons, I suppose we'll see more use of evap. cooling. Ours consumes about 100Watts of power, about the same as a light bulb. Conceivably you could run these off solar panels ( which works well cause you want the cooling on when the sun is at it's maximum ). The evap coolers use a fair bit of water of course, but if you have rainwater tanks, that helps out there.

You also need to be in an area where an evap cooler works. I'd guess that most of the population is in an area where they'd be ineffective.

Originally Posted by waynep

what about using some of those plug in wall timers ?

i.e for the washing ....throw your clothes and the soap in ...set the timer to start at say, 2 am. Could do the same with the dishwasher

I guesss machines with built in timers and combined washer/dryers will become more common.

Edit : oops Scrambler already suggested that, sorry mate.

..I can see some dude coming up with a device that links the smart meter to the appliances i.e. turns them on when power charge is at its lowest.

...as for aircons, I suppose we'll see more use of evap. cooling. Ours consumes about 100Watts of power, about the same as a light bulb. Conceivably you could run these off solar panels ( which works well cause you want the cooling on when the sun is at it's maximum ). The evap coolers use a fair bit of water of course, but if you have rainwater tanks, that helps out there.

You probably won't be surprised that evaporative coolers don't work very well in humid conditions (as very little evaporation happens).