You couldn't make it up

[klondike]

Great Reset: German Govt Wants to Remote Control Home Heat, Electric Car Charge

A government agency in Germany has announced a new scheme that will see power suppliers able to remotely limit home heating and electric car charging.

Germany's Federal Network Agency, a government watchdog responsible for the regulation of electricity and gas in the country, has announced a new plan that will allow power grid operators to remotely limit the use of heat pumps and electric car chargers in Germany next winter without the user's permission.

With the plans set to be put in place by January 2024, the measure has been described as a way of ensuring energy grid operators have the ability to artificially curb electricity demand should consumption outstrip supply.

According to a report on the new scheme penned by Die Welt, the plan has been drawn up in response to the German energy grid being put under more and more strain by an increasing number of electric car chargers and people using more 'environmentally friendly' but electricity-intense heat pumps in their homes.

Such an increased demand reportedly cannot be caught up to with increased supply, at least in the short term, meaning that authorities within the Federal Network Agency believe that remote consumption restrictions must be rolled out on certain devices.

As a result, the agency reportedly says that an "acceptance of necessary comfort restrictions" on the part of the general public is now required, with it to be mandated that heat pumps — often used to heat homes and hot water — as well as electric car chargers, become remotely controllable by energy grid operators.

Full story https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2022/12/25/great-reset-home-heating-and-electric-car-charging-to-be-remotely-throttled-under-government-scheme/

This crap is starting to unravel....

[Michael Rolls]

Ja, Mein Fuhrer!

[Diasi]

I've long said that heat pumps are an expensive load of bollocks.

[Michael Rolls]

as have I

[Jacqueline]

Remotely limit power supplies? how will they do this I wonder? am I talking rubbish or could  your "smart meter" possibly do this?

So much for converting to renewable green energy, will stick to oil central heating and diesel car, of course that could be stopped too so you will never win.

[Cassandra]

Remotely limit power supplies? how will they do this I wonder? am I talking rubbish or could  your "smart meter" possibly do this?

So much for converting to renewable green energy, will stick to oil central heating and diesel car, of course that could be stopped too so you will never win.

Quite easily Jaqueline, which was the real reason for their introduction. They are the 'suppliers' (ticket collectors for the Blob) sentry.

[Michael Rolls]

As I have made very clear - I have never trusted the concept of 'smart' meters and will resist having them with the utmost of my power

[Diasi]

Remotely limit power supplies? how will they do this I wonder? am I talking rubbish or could  your "smart meter" possibly do this?

So much for converting to renewable green energy, will stick to oil central heating and diesel car, of course that could be stopped too so you will never win.

The article, based on what's possible, has been sensationalised.

At the moment if power demand outstrips supply either parts of the grid or the entire grid get shut down & everyone has no power.

With smart meters, at times of power shortages, it becomes possible to control the power usage of individual households.

The concept is nothing new, your broadband & mobile phone provider have 'fair usage' clauses that allows them to control your usage by reducing the speed of your service to such a level that you can't play games or stream films etc.

[Michael Rolls]

bit different from being unable to heat your house at the whim of a supplier failing in its duty

[klondike]

The thing I find interesting is the suggestion that individual usage can be curtailed. For it to be possible to shut off a car charger or heat pump they must either be on separate switchable circuits or more likely the devices themselves must be capable of remote control in some way. I think the remote control is more likely but didn't know they were buit with such capabilities. I think that smart meters are just limited to switching off the entire supply. I could be wrong on any of that as I've not researched it

The reason I started this thread was because of the bit I emphasised - the electric cars and heat pumps are overloading the grid. I predicted that a long time back and have seen no evidence that anything is being done. When the next (almost certainly Labour) government is forced to backpedal on electric only cars come 2030 you'll hear the Tories scream foul but it clearly isn't viable even now.

You used to hear a lot of talk about ISPs throttling connections. I think they mostly simply didn't provide sufficient capacity for all their customers to consistently achieve the speeds that they had been sold. This has improved a lot in recent years now that the Openreach monoply has had to face stiff competition from independents.

[JBR]

I, too, have resisted the acceptance of a smart meter and shall continue to do so for the reasons given by others.

On the other hand, as reported in the Telegraph yesterday, there are many people (including ourselves) who pay regularly by Direct Debit and have consequently built up a rather large credit.  Despite that, our energy suppier (in common with all others) have recently put up the Direct Debit amount.
They did the same a couple of months ago and I wrote to them asking them to reduce the amount, which they did, then the other day they put it up again.

I hear that some suppliers (Shell is one) which agree to allow customers to pay only when they receive their bill and not compulsorily have a DD.

[GrannyMac]

We're with Shell, they wanted a much larger DD than we had, even though we reduced our usage significantly.   I wanted to increase it, but not to the level they suggested as we had a large credit balance, and we, like everyone were benefitting from £66/67 each month over the winter. I rang them, they have increased the DD to what I wanted. Very helpful on the phone.

Our billing date is the 22nd, but so far no bill for December. I've roughly calculated it, we'll still be quite a bit in credit I believe, enough to cover the next two expensive months.

[klondike]

Octopus always got good CS reviews when I was researching who to move to when my previous fix was running out. I didn't switch to them choosing Avro instead as they were cheaper. Unfortunately they went bust and my account was moved to Octopus by Ofgem. 

I'm not impressed with the Octopus website which is difficult to navigate and sometimes bits don't work correctly. BUT they do let you set your DD to whatever you want, move your billing date (which I did for convenience) and claim back any credit should you want to all online. 

I'm happy to pay the same every month and build a big balance to cover the winter bills but if I wanted to I could handle it differently. From memory there used to be a small discount for paying by DD with all providers and I'm not sure if I could just have them take each month on a variable basis but as I said I'm happy to do what they prefer anyway. I won't lose if they go bust as those credits are government guaranteed and get swapped to the provider you get shifted to (eventually). 

[Diasi]

The thing I find interesting is the suggestion that individual usage can be curtailed. For it to be possible to shut off a car charger or heat pump they must either be on separate switchable circuits or more likely the devices themselves must be capable of remote control in some way. I think the remote control is more likely but didn't know they were buit with such capabilities. I think that smart meters are just limited to switching off the entire supply. I could be wrong on any of that as I've not researched it

In the UK it will be difficult to implement as not everyone has a smart meter so we'll have to bump along with power cuts for everyone.

 So, in a time of an electricity generation crisis, Joe Bloggs, who's using 300 watts of electricity for his lights & boiler, will have his supply cut off, due to his neighbour using 20 kilowatts to charge a couple of EVs.

[Michael Rolls]

typical!