Options
Smart meters will save only 2% on energy bills
noise747
Posts: 30,862 Forum Member
✭✭✭
Smart meters will save only 2% on energy bills, say MPs
I have said something along these lines before, smart meters are a waste of money and will put no doubt put cost onto our bills by the time we pay for them.
I have said something along these lines before, smart meters are a waste of money and will put no doubt put cost onto our bills by the time we pay for them.
0
Comments
I guess it's like the dieting advice of eat less and exercise more being lost on most. Who knew that turning off appliances would save money?
It won't matter anyway, as there will be a 12% rise put on everyone's bill to pay for the 2% the utility companies will be losing on smart meters.
Most of the things you might be able to switch off (TVs left on in empty bedrooms, computers left on doing nothing) aren't major consumers anyway. If they really had to spend our money on something like this it'd be better to have older consumer units (like mine) replaced with newer RCD models. It won't save energy but at least it offers some safety improvements.
Using a lower temperature to wash your clothes will save quite a bit on the electric bill as most of the energy used in a washing machine goes towards heating the water.
When boiling a kettle only fill it with the amount of water you need, any more and you are just wasting energy trying to heat water you are not using.
TVs, dvd players, satellite receivers and most other consumer items use power when they are on standby so switching them off at night will save several kilowatts over the course of a year. I did a test with my satellite receiver and when it is switched on it uses 70W, on standby it uses 69.5W, all the standby button did was turn off the LED back-light on the display.
Putting a computer into sleep mode when you walk away will save energy, desktops can use several hundred watts when they are running while in sleep mode they only consume enough energy to keep the memory refreshed. With modern computers it only takes a second or two to come out of sleep mode so it isn't any more inconvenient to put it to sleep when you are not using it.
Using LED lighting instead of incandescent lights will save energy without costing a fortune to install. I managed to drop the total energy consumption for the lighting in my house from 1.5KW to 180W just by changing all of the lights to LED.
Each of those things will not save much energy on their own but combined together they can make quite a saving. I have managed to reduce my electric bill by around 40% just by making a few changes to the way I use electricity.
Do you think it's going to have a text display saying 'If you kept more stuff in your fridge/freezer it'd not use as much power' or 'I've just detected that you boiled more water than you really needed.'?
A smart meter is not going to be much use for most of those items you've listed. All it does is sit there and tell you current consumption and a history of prior consumption both of which are systemic values. It can't tell whether that 1kw load is your fridge or your kettle (or both of them. Or several other smaller items). What you need to find out about individual power usage is is a power meter. Even then some of the items you've listed are difficult to detect. The only way to detect the difference in power usage of a fridge is to monitor the power it uses, the ambient temperature of the room it's located in and the amount of food contained within it over several weeks.
Anyone that wants to do this stuff (and I did some of it a few years ago) can already do so by buying a power meter for about £15. Well..bearing in mind that monitoring power consumption is actually more complicated than that because of the power factor.
It is not recommended to keep turning your Sky box on and off at the mains.