How will smart grids change the UK energy system?

Not a professional opinion, but if it helps to get the discussion going...

To my mind the "smart" aspect is simply adding a real-time information layer on top of the existing grid - so consumers have some information of what's happening on the grid side and those on the grid side can see what individual customers need - and both are then able to make decisions and adjust things  based on that data. Often the information is "composited" to some extent - consumers don't get to see how much generation is available for instance, but do see a unit price, which is a reflection of that.

It's not just the smart meters and their comms - data also flows through other means too - e.g. for some tariffs, half-hour unit prices are made available over the normal internet and in many cases that's more convenient for the consumer's systems than trying to pull such data off the HAN.

In principle, things can operate not just grid-wide (generally aiding balancing total generation with total demand) - but could be applied at lower levels too - e.g. adjusting the timing of tariffs to avoid local peaks on individual substations or regional distribution. The current (political) situation of having multiple competing suppliers probably doesn't encourage such things, but technically the possibility is there none the less.

Challenges are of course many and varied. Personally I've hit a problem with comms with my smart meter - while it seemed OK when just reporting totals monthly, now I've moved to a new (peak/off-peak) tariff that requires the half-hour data it's struggling - and perhaps 10% of reading seem to be missing. Someone's coming tomorrow to try and improve the comms ... we'll have to see if they succeed. That sort of thing opens a debate of quite how suppliers use system for billing - (as I understand it) they could program the smart meter to accumulate to different registers at different times of use (and if all else failed I could then read the meter manually and send them a couple of readings), but rather they seem to be insisting on using the half-hour data and doing the adding up themselves (which fails dismally when the meter communications is a bit intermittent). I suspect there's more going on in the background (e.g. they want the half-hour data to show that they're balancing demand between their customers and their generation on a real-time basis, not just over a year), but often there's a lack of clarity about why such things are structured in the way they are.

  - Andy.

Not a professional opinion, but if it helps to get the discussion going...

To my mind the "smart" aspect is simply adding a real-time information layer on top of the existing grid - so consumers have some information of what's happening on the grid side and those on the grid side can see what individual customers need - and both are then able to make decisions and adjust things  based on that data. Often the information is "composited" to some extent - consumers don't get to see how much generation is available for instance, but do see a unit price, which is a reflection of that.

It's not just the smart meters and their comms - data also flows through other means too - e.g. for some tariffs, half-hour unit prices are made available over the normal internet and in many cases that's more convenient for the consumer's systems than trying to pull such data off the HAN.

In principle, things can operate not just grid-wide (generally aiding balancing total generation with total demand) - but could be applied at lower levels too - e.g. adjusting the timing of tariffs to avoid local peaks on individual substations or regional distribution. The current (political) situation of having multiple competing suppliers probably doesn't encourage such things, but technically the possibility is there none the less.

Challenges are of course many and varied. Personally I've hit a problem with comms with my smart meter - while it seemed OK when just reporting totals monthly, now I've moved to a new (peak/off-peak) tariff that requires the half-hour data it's struggling - and perhaps 10% of reading seem to be missing. Someone's coming tomorrow to try and improve the comms ... we'll have to see if they succeed. That sort of thing opens a debate of quite how suppliers use system for billing - (as I understand it) they could program the smart meter to accumulate to different registers at different times of use (and if all else failed I could then read the meter manually and send them a couple of readings), but rather they seem to be insisting on using the half-hour data and doing the adding up themselves (which fails dismally when the meter communications is a bit intermittent). I suspect there's more going on in the background (e.g. they want the half-hour data to show that they're balancing demand between their customers and their generation on a real-time basis, not just over a year), but often there's a lack of clarity about why such things are structured in the way they are.

  - Andy.

Thanks