Smart meters cause soaring bills True or False

[Vortigern]

Do smart meters cause soaring bills due to inrush currents recorded digitally? Low power factor equipment may cause this???? What is the hive mind conclusion?

 

[telectrix]

21.8p for 1kWH leccy. we'repaying for all them bloody windmills. green energy..... shove it. build a couple of nuke power stations.

 

[Simon47]

The point is that you had to accurately do this or suffer a penalty costwise if you exceeded the required Kva, so no pressure then.

But that's nothing new and again isn't specific to smart meters.

 

[brianmoooore]

21.8p for 1kWH leccy. we'repaying for all them bloody windmills. green energy..... shove it. build a couple of nuke power stations.

I expect that Telectrix, like me, can remember the opening of Calder Hall, and the announcement that electricity production would 'soon be too cheap to meter'. Wonder what happened to that one!
The 'strike' price for Hinkley C, at 9.25p/kWhr (subject to increase with inflation), which seemed outrageously high when announced, now seems more attractive by the day.

 

[Vortigern]

I recall as a kid the headlines showing a piece of coal and saying the equivalent nuclear engergy from that size could power a city and that electricity would be free! Must have been around 1964, so much for that then!

 

[freddo]

LOL my supplier has just emailed me: 'We're increasing your Direct Debit, to help cover future price increases.' Imagine if I charged customers for electrical work I might (or might not) carry out at some point in the future!

 

[Simon47]

I expect that Telectrix, like me, can remember the opening of Calder Hall, and the announcement that electricity production would 'soon be too cheap to meter'. Wonder what happened to that one!

We know what happened to that, it got nobbled by the "we want zero risk" brigade pushing costs up by taking the R out of ALARP on safety.

The 'strike' price for Hinkley C, at 9.25p/kWhr (subject to increase with inflation), which seemed outrageously high when announced, now seems more attractive by the day.

Indeed it does. Of course, that doesn't stop the renewables lobby criticising it for being an outrageous "subsidy" as the windmill operators sit back and harvest the "but it's definitely not a subsidy" ROCs while quietly ignoring the externalised costs of dealing with their intermittency as they talk about how cheap wind power is (if you ignore the subsidies a.k.a. ROCs and externalised costs).

LOL my supplier has just emailed me: 'We're increasing your Direct Debit, to help cover future price increases.' Imagine if I charged customers for electrical work I might (or might not) carry out at some point in the future!

The difference being that (unless you switch suppliers, in which case any credit balance will get transferred or refunded), you have contracted to take energy on an ongoing basis. It seems sensible for the energy suppliers to manage customers' DDs so as to avoid racking up large debts that they then might struggle to clear. I know we're in credit with our supplier at the moment because we use less gas and lecky during the summer - but by next spring we'll probably be in debit. If we, or rather our supplier, gets it right then we'll keep to a fairly stable DD without building up massive credits or debits with them.
An equivalent might be that you contract with a commercial customer to do ongoing works - e.g. a rolling plan for inspection and testing such that everything gets done every so many years - and you charge a fixed monthly amount. If you know your costs are going to go up massively, you would be looking to adjust your monthly charge to suit. Also, you probably won't do the same amount of work every month as you fit it in with other work - so some months you'll be doing work you're not charging for, and other months you'll be charging for work you're not doing (in that month).