DS Forums

 
 

Stop smart meters.


Reply
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 07-12-2016, 17:23
srpsrp
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 351
I have a cupboard full of the bulbs as they were sent to Mum from Help the Aged and to us because of my daughter - I do use them, but not at any fast rate as the ones I installed when I moved in 12 years ago have never yet needed changing! I am happy to use them when they need changing though, I don't need to buy any for another 20 years at least
Except that we are switching over to LED bulbs now. I got some cheap 3W LED lamps from LIDL. It's barely worth the effort of turning them off
srpsrp is offline   Reply With Quote
Please sign in or register to remove this advertisement.
Old 07-12-2016, 17:40
MAW
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 28,523
Except that we are switching over to LED bulbs now. I got some cheap 3W LED lamps from LIDL. It's barely worth the effort of turning them off
Even our chandelier bulbs are LED. They dim properly nowadays too.
MAW is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-12-2016, 20:03
_ben
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Posts: 4,719
How does switching off an individuals household gas/elec supply equate to ‘attacking the grid;…and why are these hackers not attacking the grid already ?
If you can hack one meter, you can hack them all (or at least all the ones of the same design), that's why I mentioned the recent example of a router vulnerability that was quickly exploited, within days the routers were hacked in their millions and were used to launch denial of service attacks. If you switch a lot of electricity meters off at the same time there will be too much generating capacity and some of it will have to be taken offline, if you then switch all those meters back on again it takes time to get the power stations back up and running again. Switch the meters on and off fast enough and the grid is stuffed.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely is an attack by hackers?
Everything that has been held up as 'unhackable' has been hacked, from cash machines to voting machines, they were designed explicitly to be unhackable yet nonetheless they have been hacked. The mobile phone network (2G) was designed to be secure at the time (although that security was deliberately weakened on the insistence of the intelligence services) but now it's relatively easy to hack with a normal laptop and rainbow tables. It's really just a matter of motivation, and I reckon the prize of taking down an entire nations electricity supply is big enough to motivate some very clever people to expend a lot of effort on this. Sooner or later it's going to happen somewhere.
_ben is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-12-2016, 10:03
njp
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 21,643
Even our chandelier bulbs are LED. They dim properly nowadays too.
Do you know if the dimmer switches you are using are leading or trailing edge?

I've tried replacing dimmer-controlled halogen GU10s with dimmable LED GU10s, and found the results unsatisfactory. In one case, I just replaced the dimmer switch with a normal one, because it was rarely used and not very good in the first place. But I also have some radio-controlled dimmer modules I installed in a suspended ceiling as part of my home cinema setup. These work very well with halogens, but very badly with dimmable LEDs, so those halogens remain as the last bastion of incandescence in my house. I console myself that they are rarely used at full power, and even more rarely are all the individually controlled banks of them switched on simultaneously.

But even if you can control the luminosity of LEDs properly, it occurs to me that the colour temperature would remain essentially constant, so it wouldn't look the same unless you simulated the fall in colour temperature in one of those stupidly expensive colour-changing LEDs (e.g LIFX or hue)...
njp is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-12-2016, 11:18
bri160356
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Made it Ma, Top of the World!
Posts: 3,992
I’m more than happy with my decision to move to B.Gas and have ‘smart-meters’ fitted;

…I left my previous supplier (Scottish Power) because of a very long running and intractable dispute over my wildly fluctuating ‘estimated’ direct debits.

No such problems with the ‘smart-meters’. It’s monitored very accurately and efficiently;…adjustments to the ‘charges’ are made real-time and on a very regular basis.

I have absolutely no issue with the ‘smart-meter’ concept per se;..however, the whole ‘smart-meter’ rollout programme seems to have been deeply flawed from day one.

There doesn’t appear to be a common thread that runs through any of the planning. Each energy company seems to be operating by their own rules and to their own time-table;…they use their own ‘in-house’ technology to operate the ‘smart-meters’;…which effectively means that ‘smart-meters’ are not transferrable between the competing energy companies because of technology incompatibility.

How was that allowed to happen?...the old expression “a camel is a horse designed by a committee “ springs to mind!
bri160356 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-12-2016, 12:57
MAW
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 28,523
Do you know if the dimmer switches you are using are leading or trailing edge?

I've tried replacing dimmer-controlled halogen GU10s with dimmable LED GU10s, and found the results unsatisfactory. In one case, I just replaced the dimmer switch with a normal one, because it was rarely used and not very good in the first place. But I also have some radio-controlled dimmer modules I installed in a suspended ceiling as part of my home cinema setup. These work very well with halogens, but very badly with dimmable LEDs, so those halogens remain as the last bastion of incandescence in my house. I console myself that they are rarely used at full power, and even more rarely are all the individually controlled banks of them switched on simultaneously.

But even if you can control the luminosity of LEDs properly, it occurs to me that the colour temperature would remain essentially constant, so it wouldn't look the same unless you simulated the fall in colour temperature in one of those stupidly expensive colour-changing LEDs (e.g LIFX or hue)...
Trailing edge for mains LED. I use electronic dimmers mostly, though I have a few rotary dimmers. Electronics by Rako. The colour temperature does indeed remain constant. I have experimented with colour temperature change, using rgb and white tape, and DMX control, with programmed brightness levels. It works, but I wouldn't bother again. DMX works well with constant voltage led bulbs too, and way cheaper than any other remote controlled dimming method.
MAW is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-12-2016, 13:50
Stone Free
Forum Member
 
Join Date: May 2002
Location: Crystal Palace
Posts: 958
…I left my previous supplier (Scottish Power) because of a very long running and intractable dispute over my wildly fluctuating ‘estimated’ direct debits.

No such problems with the ‘smart-meters’. It’s monitored very accurately and efficiently;…adjustments to the ‘charges’ are made real-time and on a very regular basis.
Urgh, all energy companies are awful. I also left Scottish Power because they were treating me like their own personal bank account, then I went to "First Utility" and they are even worse! I left them at the beginning of this year for a mass switching deal organised by petrol prices dot com, and I received around £450 of my money that had been sitting in their bank accounts. This is despite the fact that supposedly at the end of each year they should refund any excesses of credit.

The monthly Direct Debit was set far too high, I worked out that it should be around £75 per month for both Gas and Electric, but they set it to £90. Their website allows you to change it, so I briefly set it down to £55, then I was going to change it to £80 once the balance had got down to £50 credit, but they beat me too it and changed it to £110 per month. From that point on the website disabled the ability to edit the amount.

Strangely their estimates on my Gas and Electricity usage where almost spot on (the number I would enter from the reader would not be far off that listed as the Estimate), and so they must have known that their DD amount was wildly inappropriate
Stone Free is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-12-2016, 13:53
Stone Free
Forum Member
 
Join Date: May 2002
Location: Crystal Palace
Posts: 958
Also why do they have to arse about with cheques whenever giving paying by DD bonuses, yet when they take my money its by DD, the should debit the bonus from the current months DD or something similar
Stone Free is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-12-2016, 14:08
MAW
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 28,523
Sadly, I very much doubt smart meters will actually stop that kind of shite from the energy companies, even though it's supposed to.
MAW is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-12-2016, 15:38
jmclaugh
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Devon
Posts: 47,987
They are quite easy to stop, decline to have one fitted. I've never understood the point of them as I've no interest in monitoring what my electricity usage or the cost is on a daily or weekly basis and I'm quite happy once a month to spend 5 minues providing my supplier with meter readings. Afaik there is no real incentive for consumers to have them installed and at the moment I believe they stop being smart and become dumb if you switch supplier. The best way to keep your energy costs down is to regularly review the market and switch suppliers not stand in front of a smart meter.
jmclaugh is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-12-2016, 16:43
bri160356
Forum Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Made it Ma, Top of the World!
Posts: 3,992
They are quite easy to stop, decline to have one fitted. I've never understood the point of them as I've no interest in monitoring what my electricity usage or the cost is on a daily or weekly basis and I'm quite happy once a month to spend 5 minues providing my supplier with meter readings. Afaik there is no real incentive for consumers to have them installed and at the moment I believe they stop being smart and become dumb if you switch supplier. The best way to keep your energy costs down is to regularly review the market and switch suppliers not stand in front of a smart meter.
…when you say stand in front of a ‘smart meter’ I assume you actually mean the ‘home display unit’.


I certainly agree with you that the best way to keep your energy bills down is to regularly review the available ‘tariffs’;…however, having ‘smart meters’ fitted doesn’t preclude one from doing that.

I’m now on my 3rd different tariff since I had my ‘smart meters’ installed.

P.S. there are now an increasing number of tariffs that are exclusive to ‘smart-meter’ customers only;….this being one of them.


P.P.S. my current tariff isn’t an ‘exclusive’ smart-meter tariff by the way.
bri160356 is offline   Reply With Quote
 
Reply




 
Forum Jump


All times are GMT. The time now is 18:42.