NoRegretsCoyote
Registered User
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If your provider won't supply consumption with you just send them a data access request under GDPR. It is personal data so they can't deny you. It will probably come in CSV format and you would have to analyse in Excel. It's better than nothing.
Otherwise smart meters are mainly for the benefit of industry and not the consumer! It gives the retailer (like Electric Ireland) insights into your consumption patterns so they can better tailor their price plans to how you consume, and not for the customers' benefit. For the network operator smart meters are probably a bit less useful as they focus on aggregates rather than households and businesses but I am sure there is useful information in there all the same. The other major benefit is that they don't have to send physical meter readers around to your house or even nearby any more.
Your electricity retailer doesn't have a huge incentive to give you access to your consumption data, as it will only cause you to consume less. There is probably adverse selection here - consumers who are most interested in their consumption patterns are most likely to switch. Personally I think the regulator should mandate some kind of "open access" approach to customer data. Some other provider could - via app - give you real-time access to consumption and you could set it to give you alerts when your usage had gone over a certain threshold for a day or the like. There is no real incentive for your retailer to do this as it stands.
Otherwise it would be nice to get to a point where spot electricity prices are better integrated into price plans. Most household consumption like lighting, cooking, refrigeration, etc, is pretty inflexible. But there is scope to consume when demand is low. I tend to time the dishwasher and tumbledryer to work at about 3am when I know that demand at grid level is lowest. There is some social benefit in doing so as demand is spread more evenly across the day but it would be nice to be able to get a private return on this too.
When EVs are in every driveway I think at grid level there will have to be some kind of central demand management system too. You plug your EV in at 6pm and your supplier will guarantee it will be charged by 7am the following day, but the sequencing of this across tens of thousands of EV charging points will need to be controlled centrally to smooth demand.
Otherwise smart meters are mainly for the benefit of industry and not the consumer! It gives the retailer (like Electric Ireland) insights into your consumption patterns so they can better tailor their price plans to how you consume, and not for the customers' benefit. For the network operator smart meters are probably a bit less useful as they focus on aggregates rather than households and businesses but I am sure there is useful information in there all the same. The other major benefit is that they don't have to send physical meter readers around to your house or even nearby any more.
Your electricity retailer doesn't have a huge incentive to give you access to your consumption data, as it will only cause you to consume less. There is probably adverse selection here - consumers who are most interested in their consumption patterns are most likely to switch. Personally I think the regulator should mandate some kind of "open access" approach to customer data. Some other provider could - via app - give you real-time access to consumption and you could set it to give you alerts when your usage had gone over a certain threshold for a day or the like. There is no real incentive for your retailer to do this as it stands.
Otherwise it would be nice to get to a point where spot electricity prices are better integrated into price plans. Most household consumption like lighting, cooking, refrigeration, etc, is pretty inflexible. But there is scope to consume when demand is low. I tend to time the dishwasher and tumbledryer to work at about 3am when I know that demand at grid level is lowest. There is some social benefit in doing so as demand is spread more evenly across the day but it would be nice to be able to get a private return on this too.
When EVs are in every driveway I think at grid level there will have to be some kind of central demand management system too. You plug your EV in at 6pm and your supplier will guarantee it will be charged by 7am the following day, but the sequencing of this across tens of thousands of EV charging points will need to be controlled centrally to smooth demand.
