Smart Grid From No Hot Air, a British Blog

I'm just starting to explore this great blog written in the UK. It covers the same topics as I do.


Sep 22, 2009
Smart Grid Savings
Before we discovered Shale Gas, No Hot Air was very interested in Smart Metering.
We want to help business users control their costs. One way is to avoid long term prices and their associated risk of paying through the nose, or through the teeth of shark consultants, for the sake of a fixed price.
We also wanted to point out the bleeding obvious that the cheapest energy of all, is the energy not used. Why obsess about a few decimal points per kWh on price, when the lowest hanging fruit is wasted energy? So, one thing that hasn't changed since April 2008 is that the best savings are from combined smart metering and index prices.
We haven't done a Smart Meter story for a while. From a UK viewpoint the continual bickering, pointless consultation upon pointless consultation and general inablility to make a decision are symptomatic of all that's wrong in UK energy. If half the energy wasted on deciding the reasons for one of many organisations (DTI,DECC, Ofgem, National Grid, Suppliers, Manufacturers) to avoid making a decision were instead spent on implementation....
We'll leave the depressing news to www.smartmeters.com:
UK SmartMeter Rollout – Not Likely This year or The Next or the Next.....
The UK government is still procrastinating on Smartmeters, and UK energy firms are wasting millions of pounds in dumb pre-pay meter rollouts.The UK Government announced on the 11th of May 2009, the rollout of 46 Million Smart Utility Meters, this was hailed the revolution of the 21st Century. SmartMeters were the answer to see the end of the highly controversial Estimated Billing, a sigh of relief must have been heard across the entire UK population.Estimated billing, you either pay too much, therefore giving the utility an interest free loan; or you pay not enough, only then to be hit with a massive shortfall and demands for payment
Positive news of the potential which we could achieve, or negative news in how much we squander in time wasting comes from the NY Times:
A smart grid pilot project in Fayetteville, N.C., has resulted in an initial 20 percent decline in average electricity consumption
A smart grid is the next iteration of smart meters in that everything down to plug level is just another node on a wireless network. The chance of the UK having a smart grid anytime before 2050 are slim to none judging from the Smart Metering Fiasco. Still, we can dream....
Consert attached controllers on hot water heaters, air conditioners and pool pumps and then let customers go online and set targets for their monthly electricity bill. Smart meters and a wireless communications system provide real-time electricity consumption data to allow the utility to cycle appliances on and off to achieve the savings and help it manage peak demand.
One of the problems of the UK system where financial institutions have sliced and diced every part of the energy chain into miniscule pieces (generator, upstream, terminal operator,national transmission, local network, meter provider, meter operator, data provider, data comms provider, emergency service provider, supplier, billing contractor, energy consultant etc) is that getting a network of people like that to work together makes linking plugs together childs play, especially with the Ofgem mantra of competition solves everything. One of the really pointless discussions is obsession with costs. Any one of the above actors worries about their selfish costs of literally pennies per user per year.But the opportunity costs of not acting are far higher for both energy users (all of us) and the planet (that's all of us too!).
But the crazy thing is that a smart grid is far cheaper overall:
The Consert system, which is based on IBM software, would allow the Fayetteville Public Works Commission to selectively reduce demand among its 80,000 customers without having to, say, shut off everyone’s air conditioners at the same time.
Utilities typically spend hundreds of millions of dollars building so-called peaking power plants that provide electricity when demand spikes, and otherwise sit idle for most of the year.
Keith Lynch, an executive at the Fayetteville Public Works Commission, said the utility hopes the Consert system will help it to cut such capital costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“We’re looking at building a new gas-fired generation plant, but this solution would mitigate the need to build the size power plant that we had anticipated,” he said.