Do smart meters cost you more

DownByTheGarden

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120786611#Comment_120786611

If you donwload your readings from ESBN you can see how granular they are.

Its not complicated at all to work out how much electricity was used by you during what time period.

Alun

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120787303#Comment_120787303

The way the ESBN data is presented is a bit odd and you have to be aware of that when you try to analyse it. On my own energy meter I can download hourly data, and on that, the entry for, say, 23:00 is the energy used in the period 23:00 - 00:00 as you'd expect, but the half-hourly ESBN data for 23:00 is for the preceding period, i.e. 22:30 - 23:00, NOT 23:00 - 23:30. So the usage for the last 30 mins of each day is actually timestamped for the next day!

energia made a mess of the usage charts on their website because of this and they still don't seem to have fixed it after I reported the issue.

_Puma_

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120086288#Comment_120086288

Is this still the case? I'm on MCC02 "dumb day night" and is working out really well for our usage. PV during day, load up on night rate where possible(water/space heating/EV car in future) and import most during the evening peak when PV peters out .

I've been keeping track of my usage curve and it would be a big hit for us on the peak rate of the "Smart Day night" so looks like will need to opt out before they get in. The contractors have been around neighbours recently.

The only other option would be installing an expensive battery to make use of export which we haven't signed up for FIT.

DownByTheGarden

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120787354#Comment_120787354

The raw data is there. I work in big data. Its trivial to get the times and amounts used once you understand the rules whether they are an hour ahead, an hour behind or whatever they may be. I could have that done tonight if I wanted to with the ESBN data. So there is no excuse for all of these big companies saying its too complex.

Alun

Yet energia still made a balls up of it, and I understand the Electric Ireland one suffers from similar problems. energia at least were also 1 hour out when we switched to summer time. They've fixed that bit but are still apparently struggling to sort out the other issue.

There's anther issue as well in that the figure reported isn't the energy consumption in kWh for that 30 minute period, but power in kW. Any idiot knows you don't measure energy usage in kW, that's power, so you have to divide each figure by 2 to get the actual energy usage for that period.

No, it's not complicated to work with any data, whatever peculiarities the provider may have introduced in the way it's presented, as long as you're aware of that, but it almost looks like ESBN went out of their way to deviate from a format that most sensible people would have chosen.

DownByTheGarden

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120787729#Comment_120787729

Everyones handling of smart meters n Ireland is just pants. They had an opportunity to make this good for the customer but they instead chose to screw the customer, again.