A radio teleswitch is a device used in the United Kingdom primarily to allow electricity suppliers to switch large numbers of electricity meters between different tariff rates, by broadcasting an embedded signal in broadcast radio signals. Radio teleswitches are also used to switch on/off consumer appliances to make use of cheaper differential tariffs such as Economy 7.
The typical use of a teleswitch is to manage the start and end times of off-peak charging periods associated with tariffs such as Economy 7 and Economy 10. This includes switching between 'peak' and 'off-peak' meter registers as well as controlling the supply to dedicated off-peak loads such as night storage heating. The use of dynamic switching instead of a fixed timer allows some additional demand management, such as by flexing start and finish times for electric heating loads according to prevailing overall demand levels.
Some suppliers also offer more sophisticated heating control using the radio teleswitch network. For example, Scottish Power 'Weathercall' and SSE's 'Total Heat Total Control' both dynamically vary the length of time storage heating is energised each night depending on the forecast temperature for the following day to help maintain a consistent household temperature.
Teleswitching has also been used to help level out demand in areas where the supply network is close to capacity. In the 1990s, Manweb used such a system to provide different households with different off-peak periods on a weekly alternating basis. By spreading out the high peak demand associated with electric storage heating in Mid Wales, the company avoided upgrading costs of over a million pounds, and £200,000 a year in reduced use-of-system charges. [1]
In the north of Scotland, the radio teleswitch service is also used to help control the local electricity distribution network for resilience purposes. [2]
Each of the user companies (the RTS Users, or Service Providers) has its own database on the Central Teleswitch Control Unit (CTCU), which is an HPE Integrity computer running OpenVMS on IA-64 for reliability and clustering technology to minimise downtime.
The database defines how each group of teleswitches belonging to the user-company will control the loads and meter registers connected to it. The CTCU uses the database and certain rules to generate and control a continuous string of messages, which is forwarded to the BBC for transmission.
Although each message will be received by all installed teleswitches, the unique user and group-codes carried by the message ensure that only teleswitches carrying the same combination of codes will act on it.
The Radio Teleswitch Service (RTS) has its origins in the energy management projects initiated in the United Kingdom by the Electricity Council in the early 1980s. Three projects investigated the feasibility of using the telephone network, the distribution network and national radio for large scale energy management purposes. The radio teleswitch project was chaired by Walter Waring, deputy chairman of Eastern Electricity, and supported by the BBC.
The idea of phase modulating control and data signals onto the low frequency carrier wave used for broadcasting the BBC Radio 4 programmes was tested. The BBC was satisfied that there was no discernible distortion of its broadcast service and no infringement of its Royal Charter.
The technique won the Queen's Award for Technology, while its application for controlling consumer tariffs and loads was approved by the Home Office. The project was funded by the CEGB and the mainland electricity boards, which were each allocated one of sixteen message channels. One channel was reserved for testing and the final one was allocated to Northern Ireland when it joined the project.
The Central Teleswitch Control Unit (CTCU) system was updated in 2007 to replace the obsolete computing hardware with brand new, modern, fully supported equipment. The old DEC MicroVAX machines were replaced with HP Integrity 2660s. The operating system has also been upgraded to OpenVMS 8.4. No effort has been made to upgrade the obsolete transmitter hardware. All communications lines have also been updated and Internet access has been introduced in addition to the dial-in access by modem.
The new system went live at the end of January 2008 and the update has markedly improved the performance and stability of the system.
In 2016, it was reported that over 1.6 million teleswitches were in use. Around 190,000 were reported as being used dynamically to control loads such as heating on a day-to-day basis, with the remainder following generally fixed switching times that were updated less frequently. [3]
In early 2020, 1.4 million electricity meter 'MPAN' locations were thought to still be using radio teleswitching [2] - although the actual number of individual premises may be lower as some single-household installations use two MPAN references for historical technical reasons.
The Electricity Association (EA), which was previously known as the Electricity Council, entered into a renewed formal agreement with the BBC in 1996 as an agent of the users. The EA had also negotiated an agreement with the National Grid Company (NGC) concerning the servicing of the CTCU. Since 2004 the functions of EA regarding this contract have been taken over by the Energy Networks Association.
The Radio Teleswitch Service is broadcast alongside the longwave output of BBC Radio 4 from the Droitwich Transmitting Station.
In October 2011, the BBC stated that the Droitwich transmitter, including Radio 4's longwave service and Radio Teleswitch, will cease to operate when one of the last two valves breaks, and no effort would be made to manufacture more nor to install a replacement longwave transmitter.
The BBC stated that their plan is simply to cease broadcasting on longwave forever once the Droitwich transmitter fails. It has been reported that the BBC estimated that less than ten spare compatible valves existed in the world, and that each valve had a working life of between one and ten years. [4]
A 50 kW longwave transmitter transmitting a 1000 Hz wide signal could take over the teleswitch role with adequate nationwide coverage—but some legal provision would probably have to be made to make this possible.[ original research? ]
In 2016, the Energy Networks Association consulted on the future of the service, highlighting that no agreement for its operation past the end of 2017 existed. While most suppliers acknowledged the system could ultimately be replaced by smart meter functionality, there was general agreement that the system would need to continue until at least 2020 to avoid significant inconvenience to customers and agreement was secured for the service to continue until the end of March 2020. [5]
Several further extensions have been negotiated between the Energy Networks Association and the BBC from 2019 onwards, due to the lack of progress in developing suitable smart meter alternatives. In late 2020 SSE, one of the major users of the service, began informing its customers that teleswitched meters would be withdrawn and replaced with alternative solutions. [6]
The availability of radio teleswitching has been progressively extended and as of early 2021 the service was due to remain in operation until at least March 2024. [7] [2] [8] By that date, however, the radio frequency (in England) was expected to be switched off in Summer 2025. [9]
A radio clock or radio-controlled clock (RCC), and often colloquially referred to as an "atomic clock", is a type of quartz clock or watch that is automatically synchronized to a time code transmitted by a radio transmitter connected to a time standard such as an atomic clock. Such a clock may be synchronized to the time sent by a single transmitter, such as many national or regional time transmitters, or may use the multiple transmitters used by satellite navigation systems such as Global Positioning System. Such systems may be used to automatically set clocks or for any purpose where accurate time is needed. Radio clocks may include any feature available for a clock, such as alarm function, display of ambient temperature and humidity, broadcast radio reception, etc.
In radio, longwave, long wave or long-wave, and commonly abbreviated LW, refers to parts of the radio spectrum with wavelengths longer than what was originally called the medium-wave broadcasting band. The term is historic, dating from the early 20th century, when the radio spectrum was considered to consist of longwave (LW), medium-wave (MW), and short-wave (SW) radio bands. Most modern radio systems and devices use wavelengths which would then have been considered 'ultra-short'.
Automatic meter reading (AMR) is the technology of automatically collecting consumption, diagnostic, and status data from water meter or energy metering devices and transferring that data to a central database for billing, troubleshooting, and analyzing. This technology mainly saves utility providers the expense of periodic trips to each physical location to read a meter. Another advantage is that billing can be based on near real-time consumption rather than on estimates based on past or predicted consumption. This timely information coupled with analysis can help both utility providers and customers better control the use and production of electric energy, gas usage, or water consumption.
Scottish Power Limited, trading as ScottishPower, is a vertically integrated energy company based in Glasgow, Scotland. It is a subsidiary of Spanish utility firm Iberdrola.
The National Grid is the high-voltage electric power transmission network serving Great Britain, connecting power stations and major substations, and ensuring that electricity generated anywhere on the grid can be used to satisfy demand elsewhere. The network serves the majority of Great Britain and some of the surrounding islands. It does not cover Northern Ireland, which is part of the Irish single electricity market.
An electricity meter, electric meter, electrical meter, energy meter, or kilowatt-hour meter is a device that measures the amount of electric energy consumed by a residence, a business, or an electrically powered device over a time interval.
A storage heater or heat bank (Australia) is an electrical heater which stores thermal energy during the evening, or at night when electricity is available at lower cost, and releases the heat during the day as required. Alternatively, solar storage heaters are designed to store solar energy as heat, to be released during the night or other periods where it is required, often making it more cost effective than selling surplus electricity to the grid and buying it back at night.
The Droitwich transmitting station is a large broadcasting facility for long-wave and medium-wave transmissions, established in 1934 in the civil parish of Dodderhill, just outside the village of Wychbold, near Droitwich in Worcestershire, England. The site is the location of the British Broadcasting Corporation's most powerful long-wave transmitter, which together with the two Scottish long-wave transmitters at Burghead and Westerglen forms a network broadcasting on the same frequency. The masts can be seen to the east from the M5 motorway, between Droitwich and Bromsgrove, as well as to the west from the Herefordshire/Worcestershire border. At night, the two sets of aircraft warning lights are visible from a long distance. The station is owned and operated by Arqiva.
Demand response is a change in the power consumption of an electric utility customer to better match the demand for power with the supply. Until the 21st century decrease in the cost of pumped storage and batteries, electric energy could not be easily stored, so utilities have traditionally matched demand and supply by throttling the production rate of their power plants, taking generating units on or off line, or importing power from other utilities. There are limits to what can be achieved on the supply side, because some generating units can take a long time to come up to full power, some units may be very expensive to operate, and demand can at times be greater than the capacity of all the available power plants put together. Demand response, a type of energy demand management, seeks to adjust in real-time the demand for power instead of adjusting the supply.
Economy 7 is the name of a differential tariff provided by United Kingdom electricity suppliers that uses base load generation to provide cheap off-peak electricity during the night.
A smart meter is an electronic device that records information—such as consumption of electric energy, voltage levels, current, and power factor—and communicates the information to the consumer and electricity suppliers. Such an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) differs from automatic meter reading (AMR) in that it enables two-way communication between the meter and the supplier.
The BBC National Programme was a radio service which was on the air from 9 March 1930 – replacing the earlier BBC's experimental station 5XX – until 1 September 1939 when it was subsumed into the BBC Home Service, two days before the outbreak of World War II.
A virtual power plant (VPP) is a system that integrates multiple, possibly heterogeneous, power sources to provide grid power. A VPP typically sells its output to an electric utility. VPPs allow energy resources that are individually too small to be of interest to a utility to aggregate and market their power. As of 2024, VPPs operated in the United States, Europe, and Australia.
Dynamic Demand is the name of a semi-passive technology to support demand response by adjusting the load demand on an electrical power grid. It is also the name of an independent not-for-profit organization in the UK supported by a charitable grant from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, dedicated to promoting this technology. The concept is that by monitoring the frequency of the power grid, as well as their own controls, intermittent domestic and industrial loads switch themselves on/off at optimal moments to balance the overall grid load with generation, reducing critical power mismatches. As this switching would only advance or delay the appliance operating cycle by a few seconds, it would be unnoticeable to the end user. This is the foundation of dynamic demand control. In the United States, in 1982, a (now-lapsed) patent for this idea was issued to power systems engineer Fred Schweppe. Other patents have been issued based on this idea.
Utility sub-metering is a system that allows a landlord, property management firm, condominium association, homeowners association, or other multi-tenant property to bill tenants for individual measured utility usage. The approach makes use of individual water meters, gas meters, or electricity meters.
Economy 10 is the name of a tariff provided by United Kingdom electricity suppliers created in 2004. Similar to Economy 7 this is designed to be used with high thermal mass heating such as storage heaters, underfloor heating, and is also used with electrical boilers driving radiators or water-based heat stores.
Load balancing, load matching, or daily peak demand reserve refers to the use of various techniques by electrical power stations to store excess electrical power during low demand periods for release as demand rises. The aim is for the power supply system to have a load factor of 1.
Load management, also known as demand-side management (DSM), is the process of balancing the supply of electricity on the network with the electrical load by adjusting or controlling the load rather than the power station output. This can be achieved by direct intervention of the utility in real time, by the use of frequency sensitive relays triggering the circuit breakers, by time clocks, or by using special tariffs to influence consumer behavior. Load management allows utilities to reduce demand for electricity during peak usage times, which can, in turn, reduce costs by eliminating the need for peaking power plants. In addition, some peaking power plants can take more than an hour to bring on-line which makes load management even more critical should a plant go off-line unexpectedly for example. Load management can also help reduce harmful emissions, since peaking plants or backup generators are often dirtier and less efficient than base load power plants. New load-management technologies are constantly under development — both by private industry and public entities.
Differential tariff is an example of demand side management where the price per unit of energy varies with the consumption. If a power utility uses differential tariff, it may change the rate per kWH of energy used during different times, such as raising the price during times of high energy consumption and lowering the price during times of low energy consumption. This helps balance the rate at which power is used and the rate at which power is created.