Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms UK Climate cooling ?

That's the remote display, not the meter. The meter is that box with the digital display that sits between the thick cables coming into your house and the consumer unit/distribution board. You can plug the display unit in anywhere, but it needs to be within signal range of the meter to show the readings correctly.

I don't believe so, there is considerable complexity involved when getting DNO approval for export. They have to automatically accept anything up to 3.6kW, but anything over and they get the right to approve it.

It's because the national grid was never designed (because it was completely impossible back in the '50s and'60s) to have small generators producing 240v providing power that could be transformed up to the high voltages used on the transmission network. As a result, any domestic export power has to be used up in the 240v distribution network that your house is connected to.

In urban areas, this isn't a problem as there are loads of premises connected and the power gets soaked up by everyone else. The DNO doesn't have to extract so much power from the transmission network and everyone's happy.

In more rural area, it gets a bit more problematic, especially where you get a few homes being supplied from a local high-voltage supply going to one of those little transformers sat up a telegraph pole. In these cases there often simply aren't enough premises connected to the transformer to reliably soak up excess export power. So there's no value to the power being produced as all it does is warm up the wires.

The big challenge for DNOs and suppliers is the system called the Balancing Mechanism. Every DNO and supplier has to tell the National Grid Company how much electricity they need for any given half hour in advance. If it turns out they need more or less electricity than this, they get hit with massive costs.

The main reason our electricity prices in the UK are so high is down to Thatcher's 'Dash for Gas' strategy. She didn't listen to the strategy folks at CEGB (because she wanted to privatise everything) and so now we depend far more than other countries in Europe on gas generation to fill in the gaps in supply. If the suppliers and DNOs get their estimates wrong and we have to spin up a couple of gas generators the cost per kWh is absolutely huge and skews our domestic prices up as it's the price of gas that dominates our wholesale market.

Ah. I know nothing about 3-phase or commercial supplies, but fitting an isolator next to the consumer unit is pretty standard these days I would have thought. It enables all work to be done by domestic electricians to be done perfectly safely rather than than in the old days when they either had to get the DNO in to switch off or wiggle the fuse link out themselves without breaking that little lead seal they put in to stop you doing it.

John, I would seriously doubt the legality of not having an isolating switch upstream of your domestic supply. I would not been able to change our distribution unit over to MCB from fuses without full isolation.

Considering your geography I would take the opportunity to re site everything out of the cellar area.

I assume I'm in the minority in that I have had a bad experience with a smart meter.

I had gas and electric fitted to my previous property. When I received the first gas bill it was clear that something was wrong as my consumption had increased dramatically and was obviously incorrect.

Due to a combination of factors including the energy company changing hands and the covid lockdown. I was involved in a protracted dispute, exceeding twelve months, with both the energy company and the Ombudsman. This continued even after I had paid to have the meter removed and calibrated (it was defective).

The case was finally resolved in my favour and I received a rebate approaching £2k if memory serves. Fortunately I have a technical background and was able to challenge both the energy supplier and the Ombudsman, both of whose staff clearly lacked understanding of the basic premise on which they had based their case.

Smartmeter on electricity - no gas in the sticks - and it works fine.

Happy to provide manual meter readings once a month, no big deal for the privilege of having gas from a pipeline I paid circa £3K to have installed circa 40 years ago electricity that can be occasionally be cut off due to storm damage ...Just more than happy to have such convinces that I in no way take for granted... BTW, I also depend upon a septic tank system, best not to take that for granted either, seems there are a whole new raft of regs for relative to the design and certification for such human waste systems, that seem likely to really complicate the continued usage of elderly oft times ignored septic tank installations.. Hmm..

Our smartmeters have never worked properly. Electric is intermittent, gas has never connected.

I'm the other way round, my gas connects but the electric doesn't.

Thanks for the info and explanation Tim, much appreciated