{"id":1140,"date":"2012-04-22T15:23:05","date_gmt":"2012-04-22T15:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulaowenconsulting.co.uk\/?p=1140"},"modified":"2015-11-24T16:29:44","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T16:29:44","slug":"a-perverse-unintended-consequence-of-pv-and-backward-running-electricity-meters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/2012\/04\/a-perverse-unintended-consequence-of-pv-and-backward-running-electricity-meters\/","title":{"rendered":"A Perverse Unintended Consequence of PV and Backward Running Electricity Meters!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The visits to\u00a0my blog post on backwards running electricity meters\u00a0are still increasing, and the comments, both publicly and privately to me, continue to flood in.\u00a0 I have now had over 1,500 visits in the last few months alone.\u00a0 And people say this is not a big issue?!?\u00a0 I figure the exponential leap in\u00a0interest in this issue coincides perfectly with the ‘dash for PV’ that happened since the government’s announcement of the cutting of the FiT\u00a0rate back in the autumn, and it’s been since Feb\/March when the weather has got much more clement (and so they are beginning to generate more than they use)\u00a0that\u00a0this new breed of\u00a0PV micro-generators are experiencing the backwards running of their electricity meters for the first time and are befuddled by it; hopping on Google to find out more and then hitting my site.<\/span><\/p>\n

What I am noticing recently is a\u00a0new worrying trend, worrying that is if you think that all these micro-generating households\u00a0should be reducing their\u00a0use of ‘dirty’ grid based electricity and contributing to a cleaner electricity supply.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u00a0have had several email exchanges with people who are worried that their electricity meters are\u00a0going backwards to such a degree that they are in negative amounts on their usage meters\u00a0 They, for their own reasons, don’t particularly want to inform their energy supplier of the fact, but realise their need to make it look as if they are at least using some electricity so their supplier doesn’t get suspicious and suss out what is going on.<\/span><\/p>\n

So what is their solution to this?\u00a0 They are using their immersion heaters to heat up hot water, as well as using electric heating (when they have gas central heating systems) to heat their homes – when the sun isn’t shining.\u00a0 Now we all know that using electricity to heat both space and water is a pretty uneconomical thing to do if you have a\u00a0gas system installed\u00a0– carbon wise as well as monetarily – but for these householders the monetary side isn’t relevant as they are simply trying to get back\u00a0into ‘positive’ numbers, even just slightly, on their usage meter.<\/span><\/p>\n

But think about the carbon impact of this.\u00a0 The whole idea of people generating their own ‘clean’ electricity is to reduce their carbon footprint and be part of the green revolution (although, of course, some people are only interested in the revenue side of this scheme), but for people with perfectly good, and much\u00a0less carbon intensive, gas heating and hot water\u00a0systems in their homes, to start\u00a0using grid\u00a0electricity unnecessarily to heat water and space, is concerning from a carbon point of view.<\/span><\/p>\n

I accept some\u00a0people will argue\u00a0I am being idealistic about this, and that they have ‘generated’ a certain amount of ‘free’\u00a0electricity, and so why shouldn’t they ‘use’ all of it, using the grid as a sort of ‘storage battery’ for their electricity which they can then use when the sun isn’t shining, but from a peak load management (domestically this is between 5-9 pm) point of view as well as a carbon reduction issue\u00a0in the future, this type of behaviour is not helping.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Related blog posts:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Being a PV generator: Lessons I have learnt Part 1<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Being a PV generator: Lesson learnt Part 2<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

PV systems and meters running backwards: need for clear guidance<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The visits to\u00a0my blog post on backwards running electricity meters\u00a0are still increasing, and the comments, both publicly and privately to me, continue to flood in.\u00a0 I have now had over 1,500 visits in the last few months alone.\u00a0 And people say this is not a big issue?!?\u00a0 I figure the exponential leap in\u00a0interest in this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-renewables"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1140"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1928,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1140\/revisions\/1928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greengumption.co.uk\/live\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}