Climate Change, Heat Pumps & EVs.

[klondike]

I'm not sure what the costs will be like this winter. The tariff is lower but we won't be getting the £300 taxpayer funded subsidy or at least there isn't anything announced. Probably half the house unheated and the other half still needing thick clothes. A plague upon them.

[JBR]

I'm not sure how 'peak times' electricity can be made more expensive.
Our electric meter flips along according to what we use regardless of the time of day, so how can they charge more if they don't know when we're using it?

Perhaps some people's metering systems work in a different way.  Smart meters?

Anyway, should electricity prices increase noticeably, we have a wood burner and that costs us only a bag of logs from the supermarket, presently priced quite cheaply.  We can burn them in the evening and at night and, as they don't create any noticeable smoke, no political police can prove that it's us who are burning them.

[klondike]

Smart meters were designed with variable charging in mind. Probably without a smart meter you'd get the higher rate 24x7 with the lower one being offered as in incentive to change over to a smart meter. 

Ve haff vays of making you do vat ve vant.

[Ashy]

Economy Seven meters used to throw a mechanical switch at certain times of day, and had two sets of kWh counters (Normal and Low). I gather that so called smart meters record consumption continuously against time, so in theory the rate could vary with any time of day, or any day of the week etc. or even whether or not the wind was blowing at the time.

[Diasi]

I'm not sure what the costs will be like this winter. The tariff is lower but we won't be getting the £300 taxpayer funded subsidy or at least there isn't anything announced. Probably half the house unheated and the other half still needing thick clothes. A plague upon them.

Sunak said we'd get the £300 in addition to the normal WFA when he was being interviewed a couple of days ago so I'll have to check.

I did hear a news item where someone said although the kWh rates were decreasing, the standing charges were increasing, so I'll have to keep an eye on that one.

[klondike]

This isn't something I got from my supplier - it came from an app which shows smart meter usage data rather better than Octopus do.


As expected, the new Energy Price Cap for households will fall 7% on 1 October 2023 (gas and electricity combined).

This means that the new capped rate you will pay from 1st October 2023 will be as set out below (with slight regional variances):

Gas Unit Rate Standing Charge VAT
1 October 2023 6.5p per kWh 28.13p per day 5%
Current Rate 7.5p per kWh 29.7p per day 5%
Electricity Unit Rate Standing Charge VAT
1 October 2023 25.35p per kWh 50.70p per day 5%
Current Rate 27p per kWh 56.76p per day 5%


So it actually shows falls in rate and standing charge but I thought I'd heard somewhere that the standing charge would be going up.

I can't see anything in google results about households getting any cashback for winter 2023/4 but did notice it was £400 not £300 last time.

[klondike]

Found this for Pensioners...

Pensioners
There will be a payment of £300 for pensioners on top of their Winter Fuel Payments. This will be paid during Winter 2023/2024

[JBR]

Smart meters were designed with variable charging in mind. Probably without a smart meter you'd get the higher rate 24x7 with the lower one being offered as in incentive to change over to a smart meter.

Ve haff vays of making you do vat ve vant.

Do they now?
They'd have to make a big difference before I fall for it.

I assume with smart meters they have the ability to turn off the power whenever they feel like it.  With non-smart meters, they'd have to turn off the power to the whole neighbourhood and I'm sure that there would be many protests going on.

[Diasi]

With non-smart meters, they'd have to turn off the power to the whole neighbourhood and I'm sure that there would be many protests going on.

That's exactly what they would do.

[JBR]

Why you should say no to smart meters

Why you should say no to getting a smart meter (telegraph.co.uk)

[klondike]

They were forcing defaulters onto prepayment meters by getting court orders to give them access to do so but iirc there was a big stink about it and I think they were stopped from doing that somehow. It had nothing to do with smart meters though. Meters need replacing eventually and I suspect that all replacement meters will be smart. 

[Diasi]

They were forcing defaulters onto prepayment meters by getting court orders to give them access to do so but iirc there was a big stink about it and I think they were stopped from doing that somehow. It had nothing to do with smart meters though. Meters need replacing eventually and I suspect that all replacement meters will be smart.

When a non-smart meter develops a fault it won't be repaired or replaced, it will be replaced by a smart meter.

Of course the householder can refuse a smart meter in which case, and quite rightly, they'll have the faulty meter removed & their electricity supply disconnected.

We had smart meters installed as soon as they became available & we've never had any issues apart from Shell Energy taking a couple of months to import our smart meters onto their system when we changed to them, so I had the unwanted hassle of having to remember to submit manual readings for those two months.

[Raven]

What do they do if you don't have a spare socket for the bit that gets plugged in to give you the readings?

[Diasi]

What do they do if you don't have a spare socket for the bit that gets plugged in to give you the readings?

Fit a socket extender or run it with batteries as most displays can.

I rarely look at the display as I can easily check our readings from the phone app.

[klondike]

That bit is pretty much irrelevant. My smart meter stopped working when I went with a different provider so a binned the display which I wasn't using anyway. Eventually the provider I was put on after the one I was with went bust got the smart meter working again and I have no display.

The problem is the UK rushed smart meters through when the EU kicked them off before they thought things through. Each provider had mutually incompatible meters. This is the second set I'm on and it still isn't the second generation type which they all support.