Faulty Meter?

[a twig]

Smart meters are just an information gathering tool and information is power. Ive heard talk of power rationing in the future but I'm not sure how that works, do these meters have the ability to restrict the amount of power entering a property?

Smart meters allow companies to move you to pre-payment without having to install a pre-payment meter, so yes - can definitely have an effect on your incoming power

They could be used to implement rolling brown outs at a much more individual level in the event of power shortages as well

 

[Zebra]

Gas and electric both show on the same little gizmo, allows direct comparison. Electricity is real-time, you can see as soon as you turn an appliance on, gas updates about every 30 minutes.

You can cycle through daily, weekly, monthly and yearly totals (cost and power consumption) for each utility or combined.

Oh I seeeeee. Still, I'm surprised that the combi boiler would cost so much for just a short time compared to 12kwh of electricity.

 

[steveb]

Oh I seeeeee. Still, I'm surprised that the combi boiler would cost so much for just a short time compared to 12kwh of electricity.

I suspect there is some misunderstanding here:

Running the virtually new, very efficient combi boiler for 90 minutes first thing in the morning (targetting 18C in the living room, lower elsewhere) costs slightly more than the 1kw electric heater (with a thermostat) running for the next 12 hours in Anna's study!

Can you give us the kWh & money figures for these as this sentence could be interpreted many ways. As an extreme example, running a electric heater in a room that is already warm enough will cost zero.

Thanks

 

[noj]

So this morning's numbers at 8.15am.

The gas has done its thing for the day and got the place up to 17.5C which I assume means it would have been running hot for the whole time rather than in efficient modulated condensing mode.
22.52kWh, £2.65

Electric has made two pots of coffee, run a fairly short shower and is now powering the office setup. 1kW heater is on, but not needing to do anything much since the CH got the study warm.
1.21kWh, £0.67

Current usage is 109W per hour equating to £0.04

 

[steveb]

That all seems perfectly reasonable to be honest. Sounds like the main change you could possibly make is to run your radiators colder for longer but that depends on your heating controls and your ability to use them (and to sell this regime to the rest of the household ).

We have our place set so that the internal temp never goes below 15 degrees so the heating is on a trickle overnight, and our radiator flow temperature is at minimum so that even when the morning comes and the house needs to warm up a touch, it does so gently (which means efficient boiler use of modulating & condensing) but it doesn't take long as the house is already warmish.

It's made a massive difference to condensation/mould (the place feels warmer even when the internal temp is colder) as more aggressive swings in temperature are avoided - and during the day we have a min temperature of 16 degrees , so the radiators are perpetually lukewarm for the same reason.

Inspiration was taken from Peter Ward's "Warm dry home" book and in my opinion it has something going for it. Not only does the house feel warmer , it has less problems and is using the boiler more efficiently . What I don't have is any numerical stats to back that up because I have no before and after control , but from a logic point of view, allowing the house to feel hotter when it is not (thermostat is lower than we used to have it) and allowing the boiler to run in it's most efficient mode , it should be win/win

 

[noj]

If we didn't run the woodburner every night (from about 5pm) then gentle all-day heating with an evening boost would probably be most efficient. But the wood is free...

As it stands the burner raises the main downstairs rooms to a comfortable temperature and stops the bedrooms and bathroom on the first floor from ever feeling cold. Low ceilings, secondary glazing and thick curtains all help. The residual heat in the inglenook also means that it very rarely drops below 15 degrees during the day. Before draft reduction, the secondary glazing and the burner it could easily get to single figures if we were both at work.

 

[Stevers]

We've taken SteveB's aproach to the next level by retro-fitting our gas CH with Drayton Wiser Smart controls to give room level control of temperature. We did this mainly so that my mother could move in with us and extra warmth could follow her around the house through the day. As she sleeps downstairs, and my son works upstairs, conventional floor zoning would be a bad fit for our use, and would be quite difficult for us to retrofit. The bit I couldn't get my head around initially is that there is no provision to turn the heating off! Our shower room has the overflow radiator that our trad. system requires, and I was concerned that it would always be on, but this is not the case as it's now a 'bottom up' system where the boiler (and therefore shower room radiator) is only on if one or more of the new smart TRVs requests heat. There is an 'away' facility that turns everything down and this can be triggered automatically once all smart phones with the Wiser app have left the building. Our boiler is a modest Baxi Solo 2 from 1997, and has had the wick turned down at the last service to cope better with the steadier heating demand. The end result is that we have been a lot more comfortable, and haven't used any more gas than in previous years. However for it to work at room level, you need doors - and you have to keep them shut!

A set of twelve TRVs and controller were supplied by a helpful outfit in Welshpool at a very fair price. They came without the room thermostats that I didn't think were necessary. Fitting it all was easy as the controller and TRVs were a straight swap for what I already had. There are also smart plugs that double as range extenders, and the wifi network for the heating is independent of the normal wi-fi and broadband. If one of the TRVs is in the far corner of a room, then you might need to pair one of their thermostats with it - something my son had to do in his bedroom/office. Without the extra warmth for my mother, we would definitely have used less gas through not over heating rooms that we weren't using, and would still be more comfortable in the few rooms in use at each point through the day. The only downside that I can see is that each TRV has two AA batteries that last about a year. These can be rechargeable, but must be of the rare full fat 1.5V variety.

Somewhat bucking a trend, the Wiser system is designed and manufactured in Britain, and has proper support from humans you can message. I have no connection with Drayton or the Welshpool outfit except as a very satisfied customer.

 

[fernicarry]

Having individual controls per room is a good idea where the heat loss from the room through external walls is high and the room doesn't need to be kept at habitable temperature. Less heat in the room == slower heat loss. But you can end up with your boiler in an inefficient mode if a small number of rooms are calling for heat and the boiler can't modulate down to a low enough level. Most won't get down to the 1 or 2kW required to run a single room. This results in the boiler running for a bit, discovering the return temp is too high because the heat hasn't been absorbed and shutting down. It then waits a bit and tries again. This is known as short-cycling. So not only non-condensing but also starting and stopping with a glug of unburnt gas going up the flue each time.

I suppose controls like Wiser that have the capability to talk OpenTherm to the boiler could take this into account and ask for a lower flow temperature when there are fewer zones calling but I'm not aware of them doing so, or even pointing out this potential pitfall. I think Wiser does try to do a bit of weather compensation on the flow temperature which is why you need to tell it your location when you set it up. Seems like Big Data being overly invasive but its actually quite a clever way of doing it. Few UK supplied boilers do OpenTherm however (and even fewer installers...), I had to import the module for the Vaillant in my rental from Holland. I agree Wiser is quite a nice system. Drayton are owned by Schneider now though.

At home I do have individual room stats but my radiators are fed from a thermal store rather than direct from the boiler. When the demand is low the system can run purely off the store for quite a while without the boiler firing at all. Once the store cools down sufficiently the boiler comes on for a good decent run to heat it up again and should do a fair amount of that run in condensing mode.

 

[fernicarry]

Current usage is 109W per hour equating to £0.04

Point of order, Watts are Joules/s, power is the rate of work not the amount of work.

So, either 109W equating to 4p per hour, or 109W for one hour (109Wh ~= 0.1kWh) equating to ~4p.

Wh is Joule.hours per second, the times cancel out and you are left with a constant.

 

[steveb]

Point of order, Watts are Joules/s, power is the rate of work not the amount of work.

So, either 109W equating to 4p per hour, or 109W for one hour (109Wh ~= 0.1kWh) equating to ~4p.

Wh is Joule.hours per second, the times cancel out and you are left with a constant.

I started to write out some similar comment but decided not to

I work in the "energy industry" and 90% of the people in the industry itself get it similarly wrong, but you can usually tell what they mean. Some industry wide systems actually have incorrect units in them due to historical mistakes made by the original implementers, that once everyone started using it, became too hard to change . Classic example is electronic transaction confirmations in kW/h or MW/h (that should be in kWh or MWh). Or prices specified in pence/therm/day which is similarly meaningless

-edit to clarify that even people that do this for a living usually get it wrong

 

[noj]

My error accepted.

The gizmo actually reports the historical usage as kWh and a cost. Current usage is displayed as kW and the cost per hour.

It's smarter than I am