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What's that touchscreen in my room?

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Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#221

Post by beebeepka »

verisimi wrote: post #194
failingslowly wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you want people to be more environmentally conscious [...] they need far better data This is one of the reasons all UK homes are being fitted for free with smart meters. (There are others, such as enabling better grid control.) > You want to be able to see usage to a resolution of at most 5 minutes. My one updates every few seconds and has a set of traffic light LEDs at the bottom giving a visible guide to energ…

The consumer element is the sugar to help the masses swallow the pill. If it was just about the consumer, the unit would never report its findings back to base. But blurting back your information is integral to, well, all smart devices. That is the point. Once the government has that info, it will be able to come up with bespoke taxes for you according to what it ordains as fair use. 'Your showers are too long', 'you…

> Once the government has that info, it will be able to come up with bespoke taxes for you according to what it ordains as fair use. 'Your showers are too long', 'your toolshed is too big a draw on the electric' therefore 'you need to buy carbon credits to offset the environmental damage you are causing'.

I am very conflicted. Deeply share your concerns regarding misuse of such info. It will be used as a weapon. But I am totally in favour of making wasters pay up, and not just fixed amounts.

I hate wasting resources.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#222

Post by stdbrouw »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #128

A few years ago I came to the realisation that if you want people to be more environmentally conscious or economical in terms of utility consumption, (electricity, water, gas, etc), they need far better data than a single figure per month. You want to be able to see usage to a resolution of at most 5 minutes. That way people can spot things like “having my electric heater on for those couple of hours used more electr…

Your experience also points to the limits of monitoring and subsequent behavioral change, though. I mean, yeah, it might prompt you to start your washing machine a bit earlier or a bit later to align with high production by your solar panels... but how much consumption can you really move around like that, and how many energy hogs can you just decide to not use? If you notice high energy use while cooking, are you going to start eating more salads instead? Across Europe electricity meters are being replaced by smart meters and people are really hyping up the advantages of being able to continuously monitor your energy usage, but I think the jury is still out whether it'll actually lead to significant energy savings.

Ultimately the biggest wins are when big appliances and heating/cooling respond to self-production or take advantage of times when electricity is cheap (if you're on a per-hour or per-day dynamic contract), whether that's with a simple timer like the one you installed, a relay that shuts down heating when you're cooking or something fancier like a Fronius Ohmpilot [1] that tweaks heating power to exactly match PV (over)production.

[1] https://www.fronius.com/en/solar-energy/installers-partners/...

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#223

Post by gambiting »

userbinator wrote: post #206
gambiting wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your point - these meters only report your overal usage, not what is using the energy/water. It's letting you skip the step where you manually upload the reads every couple months or whatever, or worse, where the energy company employee has to visit your house to read them in person. Why does it matter if I upload my meter reads to my provider every month or if the device reports it automatically?…

the "smart" meters don't report live usage back to providers Either they can be easily upgraded to do that, or they already are and the energy company merely gives you the total every month to maintain the impression that they aren't. If the meter-reader needs to visit periodically, you know with much greater certainty that they aren't gathering live data.

>>Either they can be easily upgraded to do that

I mean no offence, but you are literally just guessing and not talking about technologies that people have in their houses. The smart meters here in UK, the latest SMET2 standard ones, cannot broadcast live data back to the grid because they simply don't have the bandwidth to do so, they use low frequency communication back to the area controller and they can barely report the kWh number roughly every hour or so. The live communication with the display you have in your house is done over ZigBee and unless the energy company parks the van outside of your house to get those reads, they aren't getting them.

Like, your points about surveilance are true, sure - but they address an imaginary situation you built in your head, not the actual technical solution that exists in the real world.

>>If the meter-reader needs to visit periodically, you know with much greater certainty that they aren't gathering live data.

Yeah and I need to let them into my house, which to me personally is a far greater invasion of my privacy than my meter automatically uploading kWh numbers to the grid.

Also just as a general remark - on HN I think people are likely to divide into two groups - nerds who want ALL the data and they would gladly upload live data to an online system if they could just so they could monitor it live, and people who think any IoT functionality is a massive invasion of privacy and that it's some greater ploy by government to control you. The truth - as always - is somewhere in the middle.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#224

Post by gambiting »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #220
gambiting wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah we were away from home recently and it was interesting to see that with everything "off" we were still using a constant 200W or so, so even with no one home we used just over 4kWh each day. 120kWh each month just for "idle" usage definitely is not trivial amount of money, at current prices that's £20!

Half of that is fridge which at 10 quid a month is cheap. Then another 20w for wifi router which again, looking at what you pay to your ISP is nothing. So you got 8 pounds to account for which at UKs minimum wage is about 1 hours worth of work?

That's a weird point to make - I'm just saying 120kWh a month for a house with no one in it and just some basic appliances and network equipment is a LOT - in developing countries 120kWh would be the average energy consumption of the entire house with people living in it, and we just "waste" that because I couldn't be bothered to switch off some devices in my house. It's not about whether I can afford it or not.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#225

Post by pinkahd »

petepete wrote: post #167

On a related note, I had a new boiler installed last year with Vaillant's smart controls. There's a little puck shaped 'control unit' with WiFi/radio which allows the app to talk to it, and it to talk to the thermostat. Like most people in the UK, the boiler's in the garage. A brick rectangle separate from the house. Did Vaillant include an ethernet port? You bet they didn't. The support team suggested I installed Wi…

Not quite I’ve noticed in east of England the boiler is in the garage only when a conservatory or kitchen extension is made.

I’ve also tried to move mine from kitchen to garage and the builder I had at the time wasn’t aware of such things.

But agree with the point, I think if a wifi is added to an appliance an ethernet port should also be added.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#226

Post by jonathanlydall »

stdbrouw wrote: post #222
jonathanlydall wrote: post #128

A few years ago I came to the realisation that if you want people to be more environmentally conscious or economical in terms of utility consumption, (electricity, water, gas, etc), they need far better data than a single figure per month. You want to be able to see usage to a resolution of at most 5 minutes. That way people can spot things like “having my electric heater on for those couple of hours used more electr…

Your experience also points to the limits of monitoring and subsequent behavioral change, though. I mean, yeah, it might prompt you to start your washing machine a bit earlier or a bit later to align with high production by your solar panels... but how much consumption can you really move around like that, and how many energy hogs can you just decide to not use? If you notice high energy use while cooking, are you go…

Agree completely.

However, knowing that a particular device is bad means that when I eventually need to replace it in the future, I will also factor in energy efficiency and features such as it being able to check energy prices in my purchasing decision.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#227

Post by stavros »

naitgacem wrote: post #85
inetknght wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Probably don't need to be so worried here. If it's a 3A fuse, the entirety of your apartment's mains power is not running through it. If it's a "3A fuse" that doesn't blow at 6A or worse, then it will get very hot (fire hazard) if/when there's a short regardless of the distance to the mains power. If it truly is a 3A fuse, then great. If it's bought from Amazon then I doubt it's truly a 3A fuse.

Louis Rossman over at YouTube has been going over this fuses thing from Amazon. All the fuses he tried from top-results didn't blow until he put 4x or 5x the current rating through them.

Really? What the hell? That seems extremely unsafe, why are people doing this? Are 12A fuses cheaper to make than 3A fuses?

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#228

Post by helsinkiandrew »

stdbrouw wrote: post #222
jonathanlydall wrote: post #128

A few years ago I came to the realisation that if you want people to be more environmentally conscious or economical in terms of utility consumption, (electricity, water, gas, etc), they need far better data than a single figure per month. You want to be able to see usage to a resolution of at most 5 minutes. That way people can spot things like “having my electric heater on for those couple of hours used more electr…

Your experience also points to the limits of monitoring and subsequent behavioral change, though. I mean, yeah, it might prompt you to start your washing machine a bit earlier or a bit later to align with high production by your solar panels... but how much consumption can you really move around like that, and how many energy hogs can you just decide to not use? If you notice high energy use while cooking, are you go…

There's been a few simple experiments in the UK - where consumers have been encouraged to reduce usage at peak time that have been successful. But as you say its going to need the appliances to support it. Everything needs a "Get this done by X o'clock" whether thats a dishwasher/washing machine/car charger.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/jan/23/households-gre...

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#229

Post by teekert »

jonathanlydall wrote: post #128

A few years ago I came to the realisation that if you want people to be more environmentally conscious or economical in terms of utility consumption, (electricity, water, gas, etc), they need far better data than a single figure per month. You want to be able to see usage to a resolution of at most 5 minutes. That way people can spot things like “having my electric heater on for those couple of hours used more electr…

I agree fully, I believe that my Home Assistant energy dashboard has done more for our energy consumption than any other measure.

If you’re in the Netherland you can get something like a “slimme lezer”, plug it into the p1 port of your energy meter and it will pop up in Home Assistant with the right sensors.

The energy dashboard will give an overview of your gas and electricity usage, solar production, proportion used from grid/solar and even a home battery if present. It’s really great.

Combine it with some Aqara (zigbee but easily overloaded) or Shelly (WiFi and I find them very robust) energy monitoring power sockets and you get a very good idea of the simplest measures to take to save power. You can even add cost/kWh and M3 (gas) to the sensors in HA.

Re: What's that touchscreen in my room?

#230

Post by cr3ative »

DougBTX wrote: post #187

Interesting point about not having internet access: these smart meters typically report usage to the energy supplier for billing. I’d go look for a mobile network connection, maybe still up?

These aren't meters (in that sense) - generally they're reading from CT clamps placed on the tails from your meter.
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