Smart meter v Dual meter

Diarmuid 123

I heat my house by geothermal which is done through the night. I also have PV panels which generate electricity and I also top up the batteries at night at the cheaper rate which takes me through the morning. My question is this, should I stay with my dual meter or switch to a smart meter??

Thanks

Jeremiah

Spear

Moved to a forum that's related to the topic instead.

DC999

Hey, for those that can load shift (you can), the consensus is stay on D/N meter. 8c night rate is gone but can get something like 13c with Energia at least. Thread here: Best D/N Tariffs — boards.ie - Now Ye're Talkin'

At the point you decline a smart meter it seems you'll lose the FIT payment from solar. You'll be on deemed export until then (assuming the NC6 form went to the ESB from your installer).

There’s a heavily debated thread here on smart meters (with some overlap to thread above). Summary is the smart tariffs are largely more expensive: Smart Electricity Meter - Page 2 — boards.ie - Now Ye're Talkin'

Personally, I believe we should pay more at times when it costs more to make the power and it’s dirtier. But the smart tariffs don’t yet incentivise people to make that behavioural change. 

kabakuyu

"Personally, I believe we should pay more at times when it costs more to make the power and it’s dirtier. But the smart tariffs don’t yet incentivise people to make that behavioural change."

Would this not involve numerous tariffs to take account of the vagaries of Irish weather and intense micromanagement of said tariffs by the consumer to avail of a good deal,I would not be confident that the consumer will benefit,just look at the current debacle involving smart meters that cannot even handle D/N tarriffs.

bullit_dodger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119744572#Comment_119744572

In general.....yes, if you wanted to be exact about it. But most days the consumption demand follows a fairly predicable profile. Low in the early AM, rises to a small peak about 8am, drops a little but remains high until 6-7pm or so when everyone starts to cook dinner and "do stuff". and then falls back for the evening/nighttime

Sadly the most reponsive power stations are usually the most "dirty" in terms of CO2. So generally they are the last to get added when demand is needed.

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119744484#Comment_119744484

Dirtiest power can be at night time, as renewables are switched off. There's no corelation between high price high demand electricity and cleanliness

Jonathan

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119754765#Comment_119754765

How did you arrive at that conclusion? In general, the Irish grid is greenest and cheapest at night time.

Even when there is no wind (e.g. during hot summer periods), the lower demand at night time means that more efficient fossil fuel generators (e.g. CCGT) can cover the load. The main cost comes from dirtier peaker plants (Coal + OCGT) that have to come online to meet demand at peak times (e.g. weekdays between 5-7pm).

ELM327

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119756068#Comment_119756068

That's taking a false extraction. Dirtier plants don't come online and offline. They stay online 24/7 as it takes hours or days to get them started. What is turned on or off is renewables. So at night, wind etc is often turned off as theres no demand and your energy is 100% non renewable.

Manion

I don't know where you're getting this idea of "Often". https://smartgriddashboard.com/#all . You're not correct. Also, you take about plants but there are different types of turbines which can be used, the final turbines to come on and the first to go off are single stage gas, which are roughly a quarter as efficient as other combined cycle gas turbine systems but had meet instantaneous demand.

ELM327

Your graph there shows exactly what I mentioned. Wind generation is scaled up as demand increases - and the gap remained stable. The gap is generated by.... fossils!

bullit_dodger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119756327#Comment_119756327

Not sure I agree with you there, but ok I kind of see what you're saying. Let's look at it from this viewpoint.

Let's take 2am.

So the % coming from renewables is 2074MW/3167MW which gives us 65% coming from Wind.

Take 6am it's 2253MW/3388MW gives us 66% coming from wind.

Now take 12pm 3456MW/4973MW.....69% coming from wind - but and here's the kicker, this morning it was an unusually breezy morning as you know. Right now, because the wind has dropped off a bit to the more "normal" wind that we have.

It's now (in the afternoon) 2258MW/4843MW coming from wind. So 46% coming from renewables.

Not seeing why you think the grid is dirtier at night? Where am I going wrong?

ELM327

Instead of focusing on the % wind, look at the mW that is consistently delivered from intransigent fossil sources. The increase in demand from 2AM to 6AM to midday is progressively met by wind while the mW of fossil energy generation remains roughly constant.

To put it another way. You have a constant G-f which is the base generation level of only fossil generation, you have the max demand D-m which is many multiples of the base at times. to get from G-f to D-m you need G-r which is renewables mainly. This is more variable.

picture G-f as a flat line and G-r as a line chart above the flat line that peaks and troughs with demand. It's complicated more by interconnector purchase and by varying levels of intransigence of fossil generation (ie some are more variable than others), but that's the base concept. I worked in energy pricing many moons ago and what to do with energy in the middle of the night was a concern more often than not.. especially if G-f exceeds the demand.

bullit_dodger

Sorry mate - you've sort of lost me there with the variables.

I think looking at today's chart may not be enlightening. As I mentioned previously, this morning was a significantly breezy morning with the wind picking up substantially overnight. Infact, it woke me up about 6am it was so noisy/breezy outside with the trees. So I wouldn't necessarily say that

"they brought on more renewables as daytime started"

as opposed to

"There happened to be more wind - so they were able to generate more enegery from the available wind"

EirGrid Group plc - Smart Grid Dashboard - chart by "a week".

Gives a better appreciation of the wind generation. They'll basically produce and use what they can from wind when they can, but yeah, there will alway be some % of fossil fuels in the mix. You can see on the Oct 14th, they generated less in the daytime from wind (virtually nothing) as that was simply the case that there was little wind.

I think if we look at tomorrow chart in the afternoon 24 hrs from now we'll see a different picture.