National Grid Blackout Scheme

A

AcklamAngel

Well-known member
Has anyone signed up or eligible for the scheme proposed by National Grid? Anyone with a Smart meter and buy there electricity from one of the 26 suppliers signed up will get a credit of £20 if they use very little electricity between 5-6pm today, tomorrow included now. People who can’t have a smart meter fitted for various reasons are not eligible, seems unfair to discriminate some customers
 
AcklamAngel said:
Has anyone signed up or eligible for the scheme proposed by National Grid? Anyone with a Smart meter and buy there electricity from one of the 26 suppliers signed up will get a credit of £20 if they use very little electricity between 5-6pm today, tomorrow included now. People who can’t have a smart meter fitted for various reasons are not eligible, seems unfair to discriminate some customers
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They`l always be winners and losers chap. In a previous place I couldnt have a smart meter. In fact, they insisted I use the already-installed pre-payment meter (!) - yet I had paid direct-debit all my life and owed no one a penny! Its a lottery. With all these private generators and suppliers, its no wonder there is no joined up thinking.(n)
 
AcklamAngel said:
Has anyone signed up or eligible for the scheme proposed by National Grid? Anyone with a Smart meter and buy there electricity from one of the 26 suppliers signed up will get a credit of £20 if they use very little electricity between 5-6pm today, tomorrow included now. People who can’t have a smart meter fitted for various reasons are not eligible, seems unfair to discriminate some customers
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I didn't even know this was happening, otherwise, I would have done it. Would have also been a good excuse to not have our lass running the washing machine and dryer endlessly, which drives me around the bend in noise and wasted energy.

I can see this being a thing mind, being able to average out the load better will be far easier to manage when we have more renewables which we have slightly less control over. I'd turn 90% of things off (or not put them on) from 5pm-7pm, every day, if it saved £50 a month in winter (when demand is highest). I expect the UK would get good value from that when looking at the bigger picture too. It's not even the money either really, just more about helping out.

Will check on https://grid.iamkate.com/ to see if tonight's test shows up in the charts.
 
Norfolkred1 said:
Surely if you use less you pay less regardless.
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Total common sense. Regarding cutting your consumption this evening between 5-6pm could also have a negative effect on the Grids output. If customers cut there energy required between 5-6pm, claim the £20 but then put on the oven, washer or any other high consumption appliance before or after these times are only moving the grids higher supply required. As someone who worked within the Electricity Industry a good number of people I worked with were against Smart meters, the main reason the Energy Supplier could then charge different tariffs for different times of the day. Example 7-9am and 4-8pm
 
Andy_W said:
I didn't even know this was happening, otherwise, I would have done it. Would have also been a good excuse to not have our lass running the washing machine and dryer endlessly, which drives me around the bend in noise and wasted energy.

I can see this being a thing mind, being able to average out the load better will be far easier to manage when we have more renewables which we have slightly less control over. I'd turn 90% of things off (or not put them on) from 5pm-7pm, every day, if it saved £50 a month in winter (when demand is highest). I expect the UK would get good value from that when looking at the bigger picture too. It's not even the money either really, just more about helping out.

Will check on https://grid.iamkate.com/ to see if tonight's test shows up in the charts.
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Credit of £20 every day?? Seems a bit generous.
 
Sad to say we have just bought a couple of hot water bottles. Next job is to throw a couple of T.Bags in for the morning brew.
 
Surely now that every household in UK is cooking with an airfryer 🤔 instead of the energy guzzling oven, the risk of grid over demand should be very low. All across the country , kids are going in to school bragging about how little energy their parents used to cook last nights tea. Well my mum did me 3 fish fingers and chips last night and only used 12 mins on the airfryer which she said equated to 160watts. That's nothing , my dad heated us up a spagbol in the mic and only used 90 watts for 3 meals 🤦‍♂️
 
ThePrisoner said:
Credit of £20 every day?? Seems a bit generous.
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Nah, the £20 a day isn't sustainable, that's just a test to see if people would be up for it.

Reducing load at the peak time would be worth £3 per day to lots of people though, and would bring bills down for everyone as the energy demand becomes much simpler to manage. Lots of poeple won't care about £3 a day, they won't even notice, and would not be interested, some others would do it for the good of the UK, and not for the money.

You wouldn't want everyone doing it though, as it just moves the high load, from one time to another, but moving some of it, to level off demand and maybe also cutting some use really helps.

It's like the below, the white line at the top is total demand, the yellow line I added would be the ideal, easy to predict, but generation wouldn't match this in the future as it's not sunny on a night, and I think it's less windy too, so the red line I overlaid would be more their target, I expect.

The red line below it is how they have to shift the gas (and other fossil fuels), up and down, which probably isn't effient.

When more solar and wind comes more on line, they're going to want everyone moving use to that, in the day, when it's sunny and windy, rather than figuring how to store the wind energy for later, and then re-distribute that, which won't be as reactive, will be less effient and will have more cost. There will be other generation methods used throughout the night, lokoing after the base load which won't go away (nuclear, energy from waste, gas running at a constant (much lower) level until we get away from it etc).

1674495212738.png
 
Andy_W said:
I can see this being a thing mind, being able to average out the load better will be far easier to manage when we have more renewables which we have slightly less control over.
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Slightly less control? We have full control over the output of all conventional power stations & zero control over the wind & sun.
 
If your supplier doesn't do it you can use loop or Hugo to do it, I prefer Hugo. You need to save at least 25% with Hugo and 40% with loop. Also need a smart meter

It's not a flat payment of £20, it's a payment for each kWh you save vs your previous use between that hour - so you'd have to be regularly doing things in that time that you can decide not to. Feel like to save £20 you'd have to stop mining crypto or something 😂

National Grid said it paid suppliers between £3 and £6 for every kilowatt hour of energy saved between 17:00 and 18:00 on Monday.
How much is passed on to consumers will depend on the supplier. However, in general households involved in the scheme can expect to save between £2 and £20 off their energy depending on their usage.
Octopus Energy says that during trials of the scheme typical bill payers received well over £1 for just one hour's shift (as well as saving on their energy costs), the top 5% of participants earned an average of £4.27.
 
AcklamAngel said:
Total common sense. Regarding cutting your consumption this evening between 5-6pm could also have a negative effect on the Grids output. If customers cut there energy required between 5-6pm, claim the £20 but then put on the oven, washer or any other high consumption appliance before or after these times are only moving the grids higher supply required. As someone who worked within the Electricity Industry a good number of people I worked with were against Smart meters, the main reason the Energy Supplier could then charge different tariffs for different times of the day. Example 7-9am and 4-8pm
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Surely they can already do that as that is how economy 7 works; smart metering just makes it more flexible?

I worked on the smart metering implementation project for 5 years for one of the big 6 and I didn't meet a single person in the company in that time that had any sort of smart metering resistance, and we worked with everyone from call centre through to management and metering operatives etc. customers were also pretty fine with them, it wasn't even a huge complaint category - offshore call centres scored worse in complaints metrics

Majority of stuff you see online about smart meters are from either the funky chicken-esque conspiracy theorists or the minority that have had a bad experience, very few go online to be enthusiastically vocal about a Utility meter
 
Haven’t got a smart meter, but I economise already. Having said that , I like to be able to use appliances when I need them.
We do have a stove in the living room so that’s been on daytime for the past week.
 
I've taken part in the Octopus trails and over 5 saving sessions I've earned 79p. I have battery storage so my base load at tea time is zero from the grid, my earnings should therefore have been zero.
 
i did the last octopus one and saved about 17p.

the whole scheme a total crock of ***** and they know it
 
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