Radio teleswitch

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.

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.

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 technique won the Queen's Award for Technology, while its application for controlling consumer tariffs and loads was approved by the Home Office.

The Central Teleswitch Control Unit (CTCU) system was updated in 2007 to replace the obsolete computing hardware with brand new, modern, fully supported equipment.

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.

[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.

[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late 2020 SSE, one of the major users of the service, began informing its customers that teleswitched meters would be withdrawn and replaced with alternative solutions.