New Plans To Switch Your Power Off
By Paul Homewood
h/t Patsy Lacey
The Government is considering giving energy networks the power to switch off a household’s energy supply without warning or compensation for those affected.
A series of ‘modifications’ to the Smart Energy Code have been proposed by officials and look set to pass into law by next spring.
These include giving networks the right to decide when they consider the grid to be in a state of ’emergency’ and the power to switch off high usage electrical devices such as electric vehicle chargers and central heating systems in British homes.
A series of backdoor ‘modifications’ to the Smart Energy Code have been proposed by officials and look set to pass into law by the end of the year
Under the plans all homes would need to have a third generation smart meter installed, to include a function that allows meters in the home to receive and carry out orders made by the energy networks.
This would dramatically alter the role of smart meters, which are currently capable only of sending data on energy use to energy networks.
If passed unchallenged, these ‘modifications’ to the law would mean that electric vehicle owners could plug in at the end of the day and wake up without sufficient charge to travel the next morning.
Similarly, central heating systems could be turned off in homes across a whole area if too many electric vehicles are plugged in to charge at once, for example.
Currently, consumers are entitled to compensation if their power supply is cut off, but under these plans, this recompense would likely be scrapped.
There is also a question mark over whether to force households to install the new smart meters, or make it an opt in or opt out scheme.
When energy networks are allowed to declare an ’emergency’, triggering their right to switch off private domestic energy devices, is also so far undefined.
The modifications, tabled by Richard Hartshorn of Scottish and Southern Electricity earlier this summer, argue that networks must be given these powers if major power cuts are to be avoided as the UK switches from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.
He says: ‘Electricity networks in Great Britain were not designed to accommodate the significant additional demand that certain consumer devices, such as electric vehicle chargers, presents.
‘In some circumstances, [energy] distributors will be required to act to find a balance between their obligation to operate cost-effective, safe and reliable electricity networks and the need to support customers who wish to adopt low carbon technologies such as EVs.
‘The distributors recognise the important role that flexibility services providers and market solutions will play in delivering efficient future networks.
‘In the event that market mechanisms fail or do not deliver to the extent anticipated the distributors will still need to protect physical assets from overload caused, for example, by the take up of low carbon technologies by domestic customers.’
The paper claims that ‘distributor smart intervention’ would be a ‘last resort, emergency measure, to protect customers’ security of supply and the network assets’.
There have been the inevitable reactions from the renewable lobby. For instance, the con merchants at Octopus Energy, who claim
https://octopus.energy/about-us/
But forget to tell you that their green energy sources have already been paid billions in subsidies, paid for out of everybody’s energy bills.
This is what they have to say now:
Clementine Cowton, director of external affairs at Octopus Energy Group, said: ‘Network companies are monopolies where every pound they make gets added to energy bills, and in return their only job is to deliver the power we need, when we need it.
‘Some are now trying to twist the rules so they don’t even have to do this – they want to reach into our homes and turn stuff off when it suits them.
‘Great British businesses have already created ultra cheap digital technology to avoid the need for this. Instead of using clockwork solutions in a digital world, companies like these should move into the 21st century or let someone else do the job for them.’
This, to pardon the expression, is a load of cowpat! How on earth can network companies supply power when it is needed, when the wind is not blowing. It is not the network companies that generate power, they only distribute it.
Indeed, Octopus Energy themselves would have to shut off power to their customers, if it was not for the grid making available back up power at such times.
This proposed rationing via smart meter has been obvious to anybody with a bit of common sense from the very start.
Smart meters, which have been mandated at EU level, never were intended to “encourage” consumers to switch to off peak, as advertised. The intention all along was to cut off power for “inessential” use when useless renewable energy was unavailable.
After all, why would government and OFGEM think it a good idea to waste upwards of £10bn installing the first generation of smart meters. That cost, added to all of our energy bills, is just the thin end of the wedge, as the next roll out will cost even more.
Or, for that matter, why would a PR company, Smart Energy GB Ltd, be handed millions of pounds to con people into having them installed?
I have a prediction.
This revelation will be covered up and discredited. But we will discover, in due course and when it will be too late to do anything about it, that it is exactly what will happen.
If you have any doubt about this, just remember what Steve Holliday, the boss of National Grid, had to say back in 2011:
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The primary objective of Smart Meters is to enable Time-of-Use charging. i.e. make the cost of electricity so expensive when it’s most needed – ration-by-price.
I think that all along the aim of Smart meters has been to switch off most of the public but keep some of the power on for certain users .
Anybody who can count knows that the mad push for electric home heating & electric vehicles can not possibly work , and the country would need a massive increase in generation capacity . In the winter months , if just 5% of motorists plugged their EVs in at the same time the grid would collapse .
So paying a lot more money for things that will not work is all part of the ” New World Order Plan “
That’ll be excellent with electric cars.
A third generation of smart meter? That must mean that the £billions spent on current designs will be wasted. At what cost? Even worse, the ability to switch off electric heating and EV chargers must mean extra complexity in the meters themselves and in property internal wiring systems, more cost.
Isn’t it ironic, though, that people who “do the right thing” and save the planet will be the first to suffer?
If you think running an electric car is “doing the right thing” you are deluded,
Smart meters ?
Its been around in many electric networks for over 50 years. Its ripple control and in my country switches off stored electric hot water heaters ( 3kW) for short periods. It usually rotates around suburbs. More modern methods can use mobile network to control the parts of the home connected and also allow some users who wish to pay a much higher price for uninterrupted supply so that their costs cover the higher network requirements.
The reason is that building a grid or local network for a short peak period for the peak part of the year doesnt make sense.
Power generated is used instantly so demand management is a sensible and efficent way to deliver electricity.
UK with its majority natural gas hot water heating can rely on inertia and pipe storage of the gas supply.
Mobile phones and data delivery work in a similar fashion, periods of restricted access are accepted ( and far more common than restricted electricity supply for obvious reasons)
”doesn’t make sense”? Network costs have always been based on peak demand, and if the economics are done properly the SRMC and LRMC costs are adequately priced within the overall tariff.
Here we have a developing situation where extra high costs are introduced, not because of normal demand , but because of supply interuptions due to political interference ( intruduction of uneconomic unreliable generation) and demand peaks again from political interference ( EVs , abandonment of perfectly economic and reliable gas heating).
The customer/tax payer is expected to pay a lot more for a lot less reliable and inefficient system.
That is what ”doesn’t make sense”.
You’re a bit out of touch, Duker. I believe most UK domestic heating will, by now, be based on combi boilers, providing instant heat with no storage, but nothing at all if the power’s off.
In any case, there’s no reason why an intermittent grid should be considered acceptable or normal.
Nonsense. What makes sense is to provide what people want, not what you or some other planner thinks they should have. People want constant availability and so markets came up with ways to provide that at a cost people were willing to pay. Now know-it-all planners have decided we should want something else and so we are all going to become much poorer.
It’s difficult to believe anything but a small minority would have agreed to this as the price for “going Green” had they been asked 20 years ago.
In polite circles it’s called ‘demand management’.
It used to be called an emergency. Not something that happens every evening.
So the madness begins. That proves they KNOW renewables cannot do the job but they still run to the cliff edge pushing the rest of us in front of them because of what…. a claim which has not been substantiated and indeed a claim against which there is a stack of empirical data based evidence.
It is time Douglas Murray writes a new book after The Strange Death of Europe and The Madness of Crowds on the deliberate economic suicide which those who see themselves as our elite are pushing our society. Maybe they want equivalence with the Third World because that is all they can achieve with this..
Yes that is exactly the end game. Globalisation and a ‘world government’ seeks a common economic level for all. Except the elite in charge of course. This has nothing to do with ‘climate’ as many in the UN openly admit.
First off – my personal ambition. To be the LAST person in GB to have a smart meter and to invite the press to a ‘tarring and feathering’ ceremony I’d be carrying out on the sub contracting weasels forcing me into compliance. They’ll fit the fecker – but it’ll be an installation ceremony they will NEVER forget…
Second – this country is rapidly turning into a Neo-communist enclave. Just this week – I have made my concerns about vaccines for Covid in the government ‘public consultation’ that closes TOMORROW btw. I found out about it via a friend. The publicity has been huge…LOL! I wonder what Matt Handjob will whisper into the ear of a sleeping tramp next that affects the public and wants to ‘communicate’ with us? Why wasn’t it on the Biased Brainwashing Corporation? They who manage to mention Covid about 37 times an hour these days..”and now over to Ambridge over Covid, where the pigs are wondering if they should get Corona Virus protection and a vague and sinister threat looks like unmasking the Archers”….
Third – I wonder if my pension will stretch further in Costa Rica? Seems as if some South American countries are safer to live in these days and less corrupt than Britain..?
What I did was get a smart meter and then change suppliers – voila – no smart meter any more.
You will end up paying much higher prices for your choices , when you will find your neighbours arent even aware of the demand management.
Your fridge cycles on and off any way, same for your electric hot water ( if you have it) and same for reverse cycle AC if you have it.
Yes they shouldnt be relying on inconsistent renewal supply, but apart from say hydro the other main generators like thermal power stations have faults too. Grids have choke points, interconnectors from other countries can be cut off in milli seconds if there is instability over the long distances ( hello South Australia)
Very true. I switched to Octopus this year, not because of the ludicrous green energy claims, but for their competitive prices. I’m in a new build with a smart meter but I still have to send a meter reading every month because Octopus don’t have the tech to do this automatically. Oh the irony.
I have painted the inside of my meter cupboard with conductive paint and grounded it. When they finally force a smartmeter on me it will be interesting to watch them trying to get it to work.
Where can you get this paint and what is the method for grounding the meter cupboard afterwards? Instructions, please.
Is it just me? says: “First off – my personal ambition. To be the LAST person in GB to have a smart meter”
Your going to have to get in line mate – that’s me!
And there will be more than six of us in the queue.
Good way to kill people especially in winter. The proposals for this are nutters. the rabble in the HofC are liable for anything. Terri Jackson
On Thu, Sep 17, 2020 at 10:21 PM NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT wrote:
> Paul Homewood posted: “By Paul Homewood h/t Patsy Lacey The Government > is considering giving energy networks the power to switch off a household’s > energy supply without warning or compensation for those affected. A series > of ‘modifications’ to the Smart Energ” >
At this rate with proposals for no new build homes to utilize neither gas or fossil fueled heating and cooking, and the push to build electric only homes —
the future is cold and dark, very dark.
Soon you’ll need to bring back horses and other beast of burden if only to burn the ‘carbon’ neutral crap they can intermittently supply.
I’ll be buying shares in UK candle-making/supplying companies.
Shares in battery companies might be worth a look.
Or maybe diesel generators running red diesel…..farmers won’t tolerate EV tractors and they are pretty effective at protesting.
Rise Up
I can’t believe the people don’t rise up to the scam of “climate change” and need for so-called clean energy which is so costly and unreliable.
The people don’t know. All they get is the propaganda from the BBC and the rest of the corrupt media.
People forget the beauties of paraffin. I am old enough to remember the power shortages of the immediate post-war years. A paraffin tilley lamp shed a wonderful warm light around which the family can gather and tear each other’s throats out in boredom. And what is more homely and comforting that the warmth and burnt fuel smell of a paraffin heater or two in the hall, providing acrid central heating. Ah, I remember them so well – until one one went rogue, and the fire brigade save about half our house.
You can’t beat the good old days, can you.
Agghh, the smell of paraffin in the morning, yes (gag) I remember it well. 😦
Climate change is a yearning in developed western societies for the good old horse and buggy days. The butcher the baker and the candlestick maker back when the weather was just fine.
Greenpeace, having discovered that hybrid cars do not save as much CO2 in their lifetimes as first thought compared to petrol cars, went on to wonder whether a coach and four might have lower lifetime emissions than even electric vehicles. It was then realised that shanks’s pony was an even more efficient mode of travel, especially when considering the land area required to grow oats for the equines.
Yes, similar report in the Telegraph this morning…..” SSEN stressed the measures would only be used in emergencies, with customer consent and would only apply to heating systems with a heat pump and not those powered by gas.”
I think he went on to warn about low-flying porcines too!
The b****ards!
At first. Its always “only used for…” at first.
Who is going to consent to having their power cut off if there is option to say no?
Emergencies, like what happens every evening when the wind dies down at sunset.
John Palmer,
The b***ards ???
You mean Bustards?
The males are big turkey-like birds (great bustard Otis tarda) that prefers to walk slowly but will run when intimidated, and tend defecate everywhere?
Perhaps he meant these
https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/animals/birds/buzzard/
Much more common.
Local Area Boards can already switch off at sub station level, an urban substation supplies around 500 to 1000 homes, so in fact the technology is already in place, The concept of switching off individual homes with another smart meter installed seems pretty pointless. Any way I thought the existing meters had a contactor that could be operated remotely, to switch off, if you did not pay. More likely is the Internet of Things where all appliances have a bluetooth connection and can be individually controlled. I have always argued that the crude control of a so called smart meter (Time of Day Pricing) was out of date before we installed any.(Ontario is the classic failure).
I think it is just an attempt to drop the right to compensation when the power goes off. I would buy shares in portable generator companies, luckily we rely on gas but we need to power the boiler. This winter is going to be tough.
Quote “The paper claims that ‘distributor smart intervention’ would be a ‘last resort, emergency measure, to protect customers’ security of supply and the network assets’. ” unquote – Really ?? Does anyone believe that will be the case ??
Perhaps it would be fair that, as these things are addressable, then only customers of “energy” companies that “supply” green electricity should be switched off ??
But…but…we are already in a declared “climate emergency” according to lots of councils. Just need for a Labour government to get in and declare a “climate emergency” for the country and Voila! – switch off the power as you like as we are in permanent emergency.
Our freedoms come at a high price.
“It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you” Dick Cheney
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.” Ronald Reagan
“The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government.” Franklin Roosevelt
and finally from Frank Turner, modern Punk Folk singer/songwriter in the song “Sons of Liberty”:
Here we go! Is the penny dropping at last. Ignorance about the difference between power and energy seems rife in the Green Lobby. Some of us saw this coming a long time ago but these idiots never do their research. Surely they covered the basics in GCSE Physics or has this been dumbed down so much that they don’t know how to do the simple sums: Power is Energy/s. To supply the high power needs of a household’s electric appliances you need a lot of ENERGY/SECOND, something so called green solutions cannot generate.
I hope that when the power companies have the right to switch off consumers without compensation when the supply cannot meet demand, they will be expected to switch off wind and solar generators without compensation when their production exceeds demand.
This is utter insanity. We are putting in place a system that either overproduces or under produces, and consumers will have to pay for both. Because.
Because, Phoenix44, Maurice Strong said he wanted to destroy Western industrial civilisation, and he had the money and power to start to do just that.
When our smart meter went dumb, they sent a meter reader to check it. He had to crawl into the understair cupboard and press buttons for about ten minutes before he had the readings. The display never worked again even though we tried going back to ovo.
Did you factor in the incidence of leap years and your starting date? I’ll forgive you the odd leap second, as those are less predictable.
So the Grid is going to become “smarter” by becoming randomly intermittent. Pretty much sums up the extraordinary double-speak of Green policies.
Completely off topic but it was pointed out to me recently that if you spent £1 every second of every day it would take you 30 years to spend £1 billion. It give you some perspective when they talk of a billion here and a billion there.
I think you will find at £1 per second it will actually take:
31 years
251 days
7 hrs
46 mins
and 40 secs
to spend £1 billion
The lie of octopus is 100% renewables. It is not, it is simply grid electricity with renewable certificates both up to cover that.
Growing up with all the changes I have seen – black & white tv, 3 channels, closed down at midnight and not back on until afternoon etc – I never thought that I would live in a period when mankind went backwards but that’s where we are now. Having learnt that windmills are an intermittent power source, we now think they can power an economy totally reliant on electricity to function. I lived through the period when the Miners Union thought it should be running the country not the elected government. The regular power cuts to save coal still allowed many things to function. Supermarkets had doors you had to open yourself, had prices on the products and the till was mechanical. Now they have to close. We now think that one of the two failed options for powering cars – steam being the other – is the way forward even though in reality the range of the battery car of the 1890s of 90 miles is still the same today.
I haven’t seen it mentioned but for the power shutdown they will need internet enabled devices which is why they love the Internet of Things so they can target your individual machines or devices.
and if energy companies are sanctioned to switch off via a not so smart meter – just think of the money making opportunities for hackers in winter ie pay up or we won’t switch you back on again.
As we drift into a totalitarian dystopia – just think on the eu and UN and how the establishment relishes,courts ‘our friends and allies’ and praises them both, but simply don’t ask about the real leader of what was once known as ‘the free world’ and President Trump.
Many not least the UK lamestream media scoffed at Lord Monckton in 2009 at Copenhargen, warning the world of the impending coalescence of the transnational NWO.
Making it Dark and compulsorily thus over Britain all part of the great green scam and its ultimate insane ambition, 100% control over your lives and bankers wet dreams like cashless part of it. Indeed, obligatory vaxes coming soon with ID cards and ‘covid passes’.
the ‘new normal’ r reset for the units – that’s us.
I happened to see this https://www.highland.gov.uk/news/article/12820/highland_council_to_support_climate_week_2020 on Tuesday and was annoyed our area had already missed our session and others were also likely to be left out (note the publication date). Now I’m beginning to wonder if it was deliberate and they don’t actually want to hear our opinions. Obviously they hadn’t see all the latest news since they are still plugging EVs etc. Fantasy world. I have consistently refused a smart meter and advised others to do the same but fear they will be forced on us since energy companies are being fined, e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/aug/21/ovo-energy-pays-12m-fine-sse-misses-smart-meters-target