Net Work
Alan Winstanley
This month’s Net Work focuses on some energy-saving and monitoring resources, as well as
looking ahead to the future of nuclear fusion.
I
t was exactly three years ago,
in the December 2019 issue, that
I wrote about the rocky roll-out
of Britain’s smart meter programme.
Smart meters originated as an EU
policy, and I described how, a decade
earlier, the EU’s energy policy had
established three fundamental goals:
to secure energy supply, to combat
climate change and to establish an
‘internal market’. As part of these
lofty ambitions, 80% of traditional
electricity meters would be replaced
with ‘smart’ ones by the year 2020, or
so the EU Commission hoped.
With energy supplies now in turmoil, radical measures have been
introduced across Europe to reduce
consumption, shore up gas reserves
and import more liquefied natural
gas (LNG). German public buildings
and swimming pools, for example,
have reduced their heating (or turned
it off altogether) and unnecessary
amenity and advertising lighting has
been turned off, with more cutbacks
to come.
At the time of writing, the UK is
currently exporting some 2.2GW of
electricity through its interconnects
to Europe, while importing 1.1GW
from Norway at the same time. As
mentioned last month, the Gridwatch
website www.gridwatch.co.uk gives
a very useful summary of Britain’s
energy production and usage – but
remember it’s for guidance only.
Winter of discontent
The ongoing stability and resilience of
energy supplies are probably foremost
in everyone’s minds. Unprecedented
price increases have started to hit consumers and that’s before the winter
weather draws in, when demand for
energy will soar and supplies will be
stretched. While UK consumers are
now receiving Government energy
subsidies until April 2023, everyone
is being encouraged to start saving
energy, and in last month’s Net Work
I suggested that consumers might
receive some sort of ‘carrot’ from
electricity suppliers to reduce peaktime electricity consumption. It now
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seems likely that cash incentives may Their contracted tariffs would presumbe offered to help shift energy con- ably prevail, leaving users no worse
sumption to off-peak periods.
off financially. I’ve also suggested in
The National Grid holds the UK’s the past that smart meter owners might
supply lines together, and it spells out start to receive a text message or a
the picture for the National Transmis- nag-screen popping up on their IHD
sion System (the gas network) in its (In-Home Display) when demand is
Gas Winter Outlook 2022/23 at: https:// high, encouraging them to turn down
ngrid.com/3z9BpA9 (PDF, 51pp);
the lights. If you don’t have a smart
the winter forecast for electricity is
meter, then you won’t get the message,
published at: https://bit.ly/3CULty6 and presumably you will miss out on
(PDF, 25pp).
any cash bonus they offer.
These publications are aimed mostly
at industry, so readers will probably Killer watts
find the website of National Grid A clear trend is emerging of consumESO more enlightening (see: www. ers fixating on their smart meters or
nationalgrideso.com). The Electricity IHDs, LCD monitoring devices that
System Operator manages all of Great glow red in anger when major apBritain’s electricity supplies, and with pliances are devouring power. One
it comes the job of balancing the na- family friend goes out of her way to
tion’s energy supply and demand. keep her smart meter ‘in the green’
Their own annual Winter Outlook her- and feels put under intense pressure
alds some ‘cautious action’ that will when the cooker’s turned on; likewise,
be taken to secure wintertime supplies I read how one Amazon reviewer exclaimed that a portable dehumidifier
(see: https://tinyurl.com/2ee2bz4f).
Under the heading New times requires ‘takes hardly any electricity and my
new tools, one of the ESO’s new ob- smart meter stays on green when this
jectives is ‘Creating a new “Demand is working’.
It’s obviously no bad thing if IHDs
Flexibility Service” where energy
users will be incentivized to reduce influence energy consumption this
consumption/turn off power at key way. There are also smartphone apps
times to reduce overall demand across available that will work in conjunction
with your smart meter data, or they can
the system’, as they put it.
This new ‘demand management tool’ work in lieu of an IHD – useful if your
could pay consumers not to consume supplier has yet to provide an IHD or
electricity. Unconfirmed reports suggest
that inducements
would start at a minimum of £10 for using
energy off peak. Using
washing machines
and dishwashers, EV
chargers and other
current-heavy appliances this way could
shave 2GW off the
nation’s peak electricity consumption, the
ESO hopes.
Presently, there’s
nothing to suggest that
consumers would be The Loop ‘Smarter Meter’ app displays your smart meter
penalised for using data on your smartphone or tablet, and can help optimise
energy at peak times. energy consumption.
Practical Electronics | December | 2022
yours has been lost or damaged. One
example is the Loop ‘Smarter Meter’
app. Loop claims it helps you understand your electricity usage and shows
you easy ways to use less and save
money. Also, they claim as much as
30% of a total bill can be due to phantom loads running in the background
(think of it as a household’s quiescent
current) – Loop will help to identify
and eliminate them. Loop reckons
users cut their usage by 10% on average, and the app will also simplify
the job of changing supplier (because
in the UK, consumers aren’t tied to a
local energy utility company and can
pick their own supplier). The app is
free from your mobile platform app
store; see https://loop.homes for details. I tried to find out more about the
app’s technical workings, but Loop
was unreachable by email, and there
is no phone number either. The name
behind Loop, Trust Power Ltd, seemed
unapproachable too.
PE readers will know that a kWh
rating relates to kilowatts drawn per
hour, and calculating an appliance’s
running costs is simple enough, though
the unwelcome addition of gas and
electricity ‘standing charges’ adds
some £270 per year to our bills. These
are the kind of calculations we will
soon all be making, and a handy online
Electricity Cost Calculator at https://
bit.ly/pe-dec22-ecc includes tariffs for
all major countries and gives the total
cost of electricity consumed over a set
period in minutes or hours. (For UK
readers, information about the current
‘price cap’ will be found on Ofgem’s
website at: https://bit.ly/pe-dec22-cap).
Unfortunately, not everyone understands that it’s only the unit price
(£/kWh) that’s been capped, not your
actual annual bill. Prices are now reviewed quarterly.
A fusion future
As the energy market continues to
evolve, Britain’s new nuclear power
The design proposal for the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) fusion
reactor, the UK’s first nuclear fusion reactor which will be built at West Burton, Notts.
fleet – now nearly half a century overdue – will incorporate Small Modular
Reactors which will probably take ten
years or so before they go onstream.
Their modular approach allows production to be distributed around the
country, and Rolls-Royce has already
shortlisted seven potential sites for
constructing three factories dedicated to manufacturing Rolls-Royce
470MW SMRs. The first, and largest
factory will make the critical ‘heavy
vessels’ themselves and two more factories will produce all the ancillary
equipment needed. Thus, it will be
possible to deliver SMR modules by
road or rail, ready for final assembly
on site (even, possibly, in anti-nuclear
Scotland, which still has two nuclear
power stations and has not yet ruled
SMRs out).
The drive towards renewable and
green energy continues, with the UK
Nuclear fusion has been accomplished at laboratory level. The
next step is to scale it up. (BBC/YouTube)
Practical Electronics | December | 2022
Government announcing an initial
£20m investment into a pilot plant
to explore whether nuclear fusion
could become a commercial reality. A
nuclear fusion power station would
harness the energy of plasma generated at temperatures ten times greater
than the sun and shaped by electromagnets within a tokamak, a Russian
acronym that translates as ‘toroidal
chamber with magnetic coils’.
The fusion process is inherently
safe in the sense that it cannot ‘run
away’ and nuclear fusion has already
been created in laboratory trials, but
the process won’t be commercially
viable as long as it consumes more
energy than it generates. The next
stage of research is to build the UK’s
first prototype commercial nuclear
fusion reactor. The site of an obsolete coal-fired power station at West
Burton in Nottinghamshire, England
The multinational ITER nuclear fusion plant under construction in
Provence. It is hoped that ‘first plasma’ will occur in 2025. (Photo:
ITER Organization, April 2022)
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has been chosen for a new Spherical Tokamak for Energy
Production (STEP) fusion reactor, which the UK Atomic
Energy Authority says will have many features of a fully
operational power station. The research project is likely
to be of comparable scale and value to a major operational power station, they add.
STEP will connect to the UK’s National Grid and is
expected to produce net energy (ie, more power than it
consumes) although it is not expected to operate commercially at this stage. The first phase is to produce a
concept design by 2024 as part of a 20-year research programme, and it should be commissioned by the late 2030s.
A local BBC news clip explains more at https://youtu.be/
HOxunnbY75g and the UKAEA describes the STEP proposals
at https://ccfe.ukaea.uk/research/step/. An overview program (PDF) is downloadable at: https://bit.ly/pe-dec22-ukaea
Other research into nuclear fusion taking shape includes
a huge multinational research project called ITER, which
has been under construction in Provence, southern France
since 2010 and will house the world’s largest tokamak. It
will be the CERN of the nuclear fusion world. It is hoped
that ‘first plasma’ will take place in 2025 with full operation getting under way around ten years after that. There
is a vast wealth of very interesting background information at the ITER website, see: www.iter.org
Back home, work continues in Britain to re-commission a major offshore gas storage facility, the ‘Rough’ field
that was the largest gas storage asset in the UK, holding
up to 70% of the nation’s reserves. It closed in 2018 after
Centrica, its operator and the owner of British Gas, discovered potential problems with some of the wells that
fed into the gas storage field. The closure wasn’t a simple
case of short-sighted planning: the cost of remedial work
was deemed too high and would have rendered the gas
field commercially non-viable at that time. It is hoped
that Rough will once again start to carry some reserves
to meet at least some of the forthcoming winter demand.
Centrica has also announced plans to convert a decommissioned gas-fired power station hall at Brigg, North
Lincolnshire, into a battery storage facility that could
supply the equivalent of a full day’s energy consumption for 11,000 households. America’s GE is providing
the 50MW/100MWh battery storage technology, which
will store energy from the 43 onshore wind farms dotted
around the county. The battery backup will help the UK’s
National Grid to store renewable energy and iron out peaks
and troughs in the network, and it should be fully operational in late 2023.
(As an aside, the Brigg site was in fact a British Sugar
factory from 1928 until the early 1990s, and as a young
lad the author grew up in its shadow; they say smells are
evocative and the pungent sweet smell of seasonal sugar
processing drifted around while your scribe busied himself with a soldering iron in the garage. More than a dozen
sugar factories eventually closed, a sign of progress.)
A smart socket
The brand TP-Link is well known for its wide range of entry-level and mid-range network peripherals. You’ll find
TP-Link switches and routers everywhere, together with
a range of domestic smart bulbs, LED light strips, Wi-Fi
security cameras and mains plugs and thermostats. So,
still on the theme of saving energy, I’ve been trying out
a ‘smart’ mains socket from TP-Link’s budget Tapo range
that has an energy monitoring function to help users keep
an eye on power consumption.
One feature of TP-Link’s Tapo P110 ‘Mini Smart Wi-Fi
Socket’ is its compact size. The minimalist mains socket
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The TP-Link Tapo P110 is a budget smart socket with energymonitoring features.
has a pushbutton but little else, and the UK version is
rated at 13A, 2,990W (resistive), though European ones
with a 16A Schuko socket are downrated to 10A, 2300W
for some reason. It’s a sealed unit, and although the label
mentions a fuse, it’s not user-serviceable so the socket
would have to be thrown away if the internal fuse failed.
They are probably not intended to control larger motorised
appliances or anything containing a hefty power supply,
but only time will tell how reliable they are.
I’m trying a couple of P110 smart sockets on my Mercusys/TP-Link home mesh network. The Tapo app needs
installing on a smartphone or tablet using the same Wi-Fi
network as the smart socket. The Quick Start guide consists of ‘get the app’ via a QR code, after which an online
account must be set up. The Tapo app is generally easy
to use and there was no problem finding the new smart
socket on my network; you can also share the app with
other family members on the same network. After automatically fetching a firmware upgrade, it was ready for use.
The app has a few handy features, some of which are
hidden away a little. A ‘Scheduler’ acts like a weekly time
switch function, although it can also be set to switch on
or off at sunrise or sunset. An ‘Away’ mode is in fact a
daily/weekly random timer cycle that can be set to make
it appear that someone is home. A countdown timer can
time the load for anything from a minute to 24 hours
before switching it on or off.
The basic energy monitor logs power consumption in
kWh for both today and the last 30 days. Tapping a data
field (eg, 0.1kWh used today) opens bar graphs of usage
from the past 30 days and 12 months. This function is
hidden from view, and like one or two other aspects, is
easy to overlook or forget about: there’s a log of the on-off
history buried in the Shortcuts menu.
Alexa, turn on the lights
The smart socket is both Alexa and Google Assistant
compatible, so it can be operated via voice control
with a smart speaker. Various ‘smart actions’ and automation routines are built in, and it appears that Tapo
is now IFTTT (If This, Then That) compatible. See
https://ifttt.com/tplink_tapo for a small number of IFTTT
automation routines. The TP110 smart plug costs typically £10 if you shop around, and more details are at:
https://bit.ly/pe-dec22-tapo
Practical Electronics | December | 2022
A cheaper Tapo smart socket (the
TP100) does not include energy monitoring. The Tapo line-up includes
Wi-Fi cameras and a trial of unlimited cloud storage (Tapo Care) starts
at £2.99 a month for six months or
£25.99 a year for one device (£93.99
per annum for up to five devices). TPLink also lists an older range of ‘Kasa’
smart devices which needs the Kasa
app instead. The Kasa equivalent of
the TP110 is the KP115 Mini Smart
Plug with energy monitoring.
Unfortunately, a lot of misleading
or outdated information about these
ranges will be found online, but the
Kasa and Tapo platforms are incompatible so it’s easiest to stick with
one line or the other. The Tapo line is
the cheaper, entry-level system of the
two which will be adequate for many
users wishing to add a smart device
or two, to control small appliances,
tabletop lights or radios, especially using Alexa or Google to control
them. Kasa seems a bit more robust
and has many more IFTTT routines
available, which might appeal to more
advanced users. I also noticed that
the Kasa Smart Wi-Fi Plug (HS100)
that I have on the bench does have a
replaceable fuse. A device similar to
TP-Link’s range would be the Tenda
SP9 smart socket, which has energy
monitoring features.
Apart from smart sockets, there are
countless energy-monitoring plug-in
adaptors with built-in LCDs that display and log power consumption. The
versatile Brennenstuhl PM 231 Wattage & Current Meter displays voltage,
frequency, current, power factor (cos
ø) and power output, and it calculates the total energy consumption,
running costs (with day and night
tariffs) and runtime. My older version
(PM 230) informs me that my smart
TV draws 9W on standby (ongoing,
that’ll be £25 a year) and over 140
days my telly swallowed 87kWh or
£16 worth at 2021 prices, or double
that, looking ahead.
Due to the design, it may not fit
some British mains wall sockets that
are near floor level. The mono LCD is
not backlit, and my PM 230 had no
fuse protection inside. It’s informative
though, and a battery backup maintains
settings and data. The UK manual of
the PM 231 can be downloaded from
https://bit.ly/pe-dec22-pm231. There
are many unbranded alternatives on
Amazon and eBay.
The Queen’s email
Following my feature last month celebrating some technology milestones
in the reign of the late Queen Elizabeth II, my thanks go once again to
regular PE reader Godfrey Manning
who shares some memories:
‘I noticed the late Professor Peter
Kirstein was credited with the photo
on page 12 of HM Queen Elizabeth II
sending an email at RSRE. As an undergraduate at UCL (intercalated BSc
Medical Statistics & Computer Science,
1977/78) I worked in the same department as Prof. Kirstein. I’d heard of
ARPANET (possibly JANET – the Joint
Academic Network – too) but such an
advanced research project seemed out
of my grasp and I felt that it (and the
Professor) were rather distant – or, at
least, beyond what someone like me
could be involved in!
‘Our only network connection to
remote computers was by RS-232, often
300 baud over an acoustic coupler
telephone modem. We were grateful
for what we had! As to Her Majesty’s
VDU, could it be one of those made by
Newbury? Yes, Britain could still produce such things in those days. Also in
my career, from 1982-84 I worked on
a hospital path-lab system written in
the (wholly unsuitable!) CORAL-66 as
also seen in your photo. Regards (‘73’
Brennenstuhl’s PM 231 meter measures
power usage, efficiency and costs,
along with other useful parameters (UK
version shown).
as we radio amateurs say in Morse),
Godfrey Manning G4GLM, Edgware.’
Thank you for writing, Godfrey
– can anyone identify the terminal
monitor the Queen used when sending her first email?
Once again, my column inches
have been filled, so that’s all for
this month’s Net Work. Do remember that this article’s web links will
be ready-made for you to click on
in the Net Work blog available at:
www.electronpublishing.com – see
you next month!
The author can be reached at:
alan<at>epemag.net
Terrington
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Practical Electronics | December | 2022
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