With these new fangled smart meters that monitor your electricity usage why don't they use them to monitor your electricity usage and stop charging the car when you are boiling the kettle and the fridge freezer compressor is running.
In theory that sort of regime is coming. The ultimate direction of travel for smart meters and smart appliances is an integrated system to provide demand management, continuous real-time price changes, priority driven usage policies etc.
You will now need the meter to communicate with the car, these meters have issues with communicating at the best of times.
You'll need the meter to communicate with
all your appliances, and they with each other and the meter. Johna mentioned a F/F compressor. Assuming you don't open the door, or open it much, there's no reason why that needs to run at all while the WM is heating the water, for example, or the kettle is on. But the F/F needs to know what the other appliances are doing.
Until then all you have is fancy remote meter reading and the ability (be afraid) for suppliers to easily implement rationing via targeted short-term disconnections.
That's great, but I was specifically referring to a discussion about chargers which respond on the fly to the usage of other appliances, such as dryers or kettles. Spectric was theorising that such chargers would need to communicate with smart meters, and I was explaining that, as far as I know, they don't.
They don't, but the papers I've read have said that that sort of thing is where (at least some) people see it going. John Brown talks about a limited electricity supply - there's a good chance that we are all going to have to deal with one of those.
your property has a limited electricity supply, and you already have an induction cooker, electric shower, ASHP heating etc.
Terry makes a number of points about how it will/could/might all hang together.
In the fullness of time (probably not far off) there will be a simple smartphone app to control EV charging which will need inputs for:
- level of charge required - next day simple commute will justify only a 30% charge, a long journey next day may mean charging to 100%. User could always default to 100% charge anyway.
- price per KWh - eg: charge when price is less than XXp
- if PV fitted - prioritise - (1) household appliances, (2) car charging, (3) sale to grid
- integrate with domestic energy tariff terms - variable 30 min charges, peak/off-peak rates, etc
- integrate with forecast demand, weather impacts, green energy generation, pricing
This is all completely feasible. Data connectivity between house, car, electricity supplier, forecast price, weather (affects range), traffic conditions etc may need some improvement for resilient performance but is not insuperable.
Alternatively EV users can simply get home, plug in, and pay whatever it costs. Needs no internet connection (unless EV charging is taxed), but as plug in will be at a peak demand time (17.00 - 21.00 hrs) costs will be materially higher.
So you might tell the washing machine to run at some point while you are at work, when the price drops below 'x' p per unit, but at 15:00 to start looking at predicted prices over the next few hours and to book a slot with the supplier for a given number of units before 18:00 because when you get home you need the washing to be finished.
As above, the kettle pre-empts the freezer, which in turn pre-empts the dryer.
And yes - different loads might have to cost more than others to run. Electric showers might always be more expensive to run, per kWh, than an induction hob.
And yes - power to charge EVs might be priced differently to other uses. Fuel taxes raise considerable sums - they will need to be replaced. Per device usage monitoring and pricing is not a difficult technical problem to solve.
