Millions of Smart Meters May Over-Inflate Readings by up to 600% (bleepingcomputer.com) 249
"Lab tests carried out by Dutch scientists have shown that some of today's 'smart' electrical meters may give out false readings that in some cases can be 582% higher than actual energy consumption," reports BleepingComputer. An anonymous reader quotes their report:
The study involved several tests conducted on nine different brands of "smart" meters, also referred to in the industry as "static energy meters." Researchers also used one electromechanical meter for reference... Experiments went on for six months, with individual tests lasting at least one week, and sometimes several weeks. Test results varied wildly, with some meters reporting errors way above their disclosed range, going from -32% to +582%...
The results of the study also matched numbers posted on an online forum by a disgruntled Dutchman complaining about high energy bills... Researchers blamed all the issues on the design of some smart meters, and, ironically, electrical devices with energy-saving features. The latter devices, researchers say, introduced a large amount of noise in electrical current waveforms, which disrupt the smart meter sensors tasked with recording power consumption...
Long-time Slashdot reader ClarkMills points out the researchers estimate that "potentially inaccurate meters have been installed in the meter cabinets of at least 750,000 Dutch households," while the article suggests that worldwide, "the numbers of possibly faulty smart meters could be in the millions,especially after some governments, especially in the EU, have pushed for smart meters to replace classic electromechanical (rotating disk) meters."
The results of the study also matched numbers posted on an online forum by a disgruntled Dutchman complaining about high energy bills... Researchers blamed all the issues on the design of some smart meters, and, ironically, electrical devices with energy-saving features. The latter devices, researchers say, introduced a large amount of noise in electrical current waveforms, which disrupt the smart meter sensors tasked with recording power consumption...
Long-time Slashdot reader ClarkMills points out the researchers estimate that "potentially inaccurate meters have been installed in the meter cabinets of at least 750,000 Dutch households," while the article suggests that worldwide, "the numbers of possibly faulty smart meters could be in the millions,especially after some governments, especially in the EU, have pushed for smart meters to replace classic electromechanical (rotating disk) meters."
That's pretty smart (Score:5, Funny)
Trust the computer. The computer is your friend.
Re:That's pretty smart (Score:5, Funny)
Bad case of 'Paranoia' you've got there.
Re:That's pretty smart (Score:5, Interesting)
I think we're seeing deplorable but wholly expected behaviour in a typical case where there could well be a problem with a company's equipment, which could turn out very embarrassing and expensive for them if they admitted it. So instead they deny everything and chalk any complaints up to isolated defects or fraud.
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Look at it from the electricity company's point of view:
All they've got is meter readings. That's all. They don't know (and in most markets, they can't control even if they want to) what kind of meter is fitted to each house. There's a separate metering company that does that. To ensure fair play, there's a certification and testing requirement - but if that test is flawed (which is what the Dutch study suggests), then there's no real fallback.
So now consider a small energy retailer with 10,000 customers...
Re:That's pretty smart (Score:4, Insightful)
You would have to be clinically insane to think this is a happy scenario for the electricity retailer.
Of course not. But it's the correct thing to do.
And if there *is* a bit of sweeping under the rug, it goes from being a "simple" error in the metering mechanisms to good old fraud, which applies just as much to companies as is does to customers trying to cheat on their power bills. And fraud tends to attract the attention of government authorities and the press - and that's a big old shitstorm nobody wants.
So your legal counsel will always suggest the path of due diligence once things come to a certain level of attention. That "certain level" is debatable, but if there's an increase in billing complaints and ANY investigations suggest that there's a systemic metering error going on, then you're on very thin ice if you choose to ignore it.
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You are incorrect.
Maybe this setup applies in some towns where the entire grid and all customers are served by a single company, I don't know. But in a competitive marketplace? No. Nuh-uh. No way. Nothing even remotely like this happens.
Every address is "tied" to a substation. This tie is purely nominal, because all the substations are feeding into the same grid, so saying that an address is served by a particular substation is never going to be more than a wild approximation anyway, and load will be shifte
Re:That's pretty smart (Score:4, Interesting)
While I don't know in detail how the Dutch system works, the UK system seems to work in a similar way, and I describe that here:
An end user can choose their electricity supplier, who provides the retail service (i.e. billing, sourcing of bulk energy, customer service, etc.). The supplier sources the energy from generators via the wholesale market (ante hoc) and balancing market (post hoc). The electricity is delivered by a combination of the transmission operator, and the local distribution operator, who own and operate the transmission grid and distribution network respectively. Metering is provided by an independent metering operator.
The metering operator is responsible for collating meter readings and verifying the correct operation of the meters, as well as periodic recalibration. In the event that consumption data is unavailable or inaccurate, and the supplier and customer cannot agree on a reading (or if a customer is transferring to a new supplier, but the two suppliers disagree about the meter reading at changeover; it is, after all, common for customers to "adjust" readings when suppliers publish new tariffs or a customer changes to a cheaper supplier), the meter operator provides independent arbitration.
The independence of the meter operator is important, because the same meter readings that are used by the supplier to compute bills for customers, are the same readings that are used by the balancing market operators to reconcile bulk electricity accounts (including the post hoc accounting between generators and suppliers). Part of the job of the meter operator is to provide independent mathematical modelling of consumption patterns, to correct for incorrect or missing data, and which are legally binding on balancing market paticipants.
Another poster has mentioned an issue of energy theft elsewhere in the discussion, and the above system has an impact on the detection and prevention of energy theft. Because the same meter reading which the supplier uses to bill a customer, also determines the energy purchased by the supplier from the wholesale/balancing markets, there is little incentive for suppliers to investigate energy theft. If a meter reading is lower than it should be, then the supplier pays less to the generator. The discrepancy appears in the energy accounting of the distribution network operator, who must absorb the cost. However, if the energy theft is discovered, then the independent meter operator will compute a consumption measure which is legally binding on the supplier and customer. The supplier therefore has to pay for the stolen energy in the wholesale market. The customer, who is likely a deadbeat if they've been tampering with the meter, has no money with which to pay, and either disappears or goes bankrupt. Thus, having discovered an energy theft, the likely outcome for the supplier is that they take a loss equal to the value of the stolen energy.
Re:That's pretty smart (Score:4, Informative)
she would have to bear the cost of around €900
A fair policy would be that she only bears the cost if the meter is accurate.
Also, it is not that hard to test your own meter. Turn everything off. Make sure the meter is reading zero watts. Then turn on one device at a time, and measure the power bump. Use a Kill-o-Watt [amazon.com] or other plug-in meter to measure what the device is using at the wall socket. If there is really a 5 fold discrepancy, that should be really easy to verify.
Re:That's pretty smart (Score:4, Interesting)
And what if the error is not in the instantaneous reading, but the figures that get accumulated and sent to the power company?
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Meter reading something? My meter reads nothing. I suppose i could leave just the TV on for a few days and then check the change in kWh consumption but most smart meters don't have an current consumption on display.
I actually built a small display for mine using the IR pulse output of the meter. But even that is only accurate to the nearest 50ish watt over the aggregated monitoring period.
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Most people do not have the necessary skills to safely remove the main panel cover and to clamp ammeters to the hot legs of their electrical service wiring.
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Re: That's pretty smart (Score:4, Informative)
One name for an inductive ammeter of that sort, is Rogowski coil (which, according to the article, is a suspect).
The whole problem here is that the bandpass of the Rogowski coil is very high, but maybe the voltmeter isn't. The digital data capture and calculation are flawed. Some electronic power uses (like all the LED lights, and microwave ovens) are as high frequency as the meters can handle, and some are higher.
The study's main point, is that 'smart' meters were inadequately tested, and have flaws that got past the weights and measures inspectors. Those inspectors need better test methods; fortunately, the researchers just published some of those.
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The issue is switch mode loads have non-linear current waveforms. What that means is if the meter, or clamp meter in this case samples incorrectly(Nyquist criteria), the current reading will still be wrong. You actually need a high sample rate power meter. Most commercial and industrial power meters seem to sample at 2kHz or less, which is fine for linear loads (even over-kill), but for say, a VSD or switch mode supply may be inadequate. Basically your clamp ammeter probably samples quite slowly as well.
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So their claim is that her old meter was defective by a factor of 5?
I think it's likely that she has some devices that are causing the new meter to give the higher reading, it would be far more helpful for the electric company to help her identify those devices (and eliminate or replace them if they are unimportant or inexpensive), instead of a BS €900 calibration fee that will just show that their (sensitive/defective) device is working as expected.
If the meters are so smart, they should be able to te
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€900 is only unnecessarily high if there is a reason to doubt the meter. In the Netherlands all meters are periodically injection tested and calibrated every couple of years (way more than they need to be). If this was a one off calibration then i would say yes, it's unfair, however if this is a whining customer who's meter has been calibrated recently it looks more like a cost to prevent abuse of the already fully booked calibration guys.
Re:That's pretty smart (Score:4, Interesting)
There are other methods to verify if the meter is performing as expected.
A third party device that allows you to monitor your own electrical usage is available and dead simple to install. Ammeters clamp around your mains and track / log how much power you're using in real time. Will store said information locally as well as allow for export into something like Excel for long term analysis.
They can tell you how much power you're using as well as what the current and projected costs will be.
If the monitor and your meter are off by X margin, it would be a good time to get someone to check it out.
One such device ( and the one I've utilized for over a decade now ) is call T.E.D. ( The Energy Detective ) Google it.
Re: That's pretty smart (Score:2)
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I am Jack's total lack of surprise. (Score:5, Insightful)
The one thing people were afraid of when they were forced to switch over the smart meters happened.
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Yeah, same with IoT. How no QA got done before approving and buying so much defective product demands some investigation.
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Not much to investigate. There's no law against selling shitty products.. at least as long as nobody can prove you were being intentionally malicious.
Its supposed to be the consumers deciding whether a product is good or bad, by choosing to buy it or not.
Unfortunately we're in a time where consumers not only don't make purchases with full information but often times full information simply isn't available.
We're in a screwy situation where we use models of theoretically perfect capitalism to justify not cha
Re:I am Jack's total lack of surprise. (Score:5, Insightful)
An electric meter is not a "product" anybody buys. An electric meter is an asset belonging to the electric utility company which they use to determine how much actual product (electricity) you buy. For most things you buy, the quantity is obvious at the point/time of sale. The closest thing I can think of to an electric meter is the flow measurement device in a motor fuel pump. You better believe those are regulated. The state calibrates and checks them periodically. They have stickers attesting to their accuracy as certified by the state authority. The weight scales at your grocer are regulated and certified as to accuracy.
The electric utilities are getting a pass on these meters because it would be very difficult and expensive to test each one individually at its point of installation. And it stinks. Random testing should be done, and huge penalties should be assessed where it mismeasurement found.
P.S. - there ARE laws against overbilling where wrongdoing or gross negligence can be shown.
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Re:I am Jack's total lack of surprise. (Score:4, Insightful)
Spot on.
After supplying 1KW the company claims they gave you 5KW. Same issue in: Taxi meters; scales in the cheese shop; the calendar in the hotel calculating how many nights you stayed; your decorator painting by the hour; etc. And some professions' whole purpose for existing is to count, eg. quantity surveying.
It's the government's job (usually is) to regulate and settle these sorts of disputes quickly so that they are not a drag on society.
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Unfortunately we're in a time where consumers not only don't make purchases with full information but often times full information simply isn't available.
Yup. Doubly so for healthcare -- someone needs to tell Ryan picking a Lasic clinic is quite different than choosing providers when you are in a pained or emotional condition and may or may not believe in voodoo.
But in this case, there could be consequences for the involved parties in the legal system, and also internal consequences in the involved agencies. It's not like they couldn't have easily caught it out by leaving a few of the old meters in series and following up with some sample readings.
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Not entirely sure that is sufficient. "Implied" and "satisfactory" leave open a hell of a lot of leeway. Though its certainly a lot stronger than a simple "buyer beware" mantra.
But yes, I was assuming US.
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Yes and no. There's going to be a question of intent. Especially if there's any substance to the claim that energy saving devices affected the readings ("well they can't possibly test with every load device ever made.")
Its almost certain that some lawyers will be getting paid due to this, but it may not be as cut and dry as it sounds on the surface and there will be a lot of wrangling over whether the utility companies or the manufacturers should receive the blame, or if they just call it an unfortunate a
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Don't for a moment assume no QA got done.
First, testing and then intentionally ignoring the results is not QA.
Second, it is more rational to ask "what went wrong" and then possibly find evidence of conspiracy than it is to start with assumption of conspiracy, given that conspiracy and incompetence both are encountered in the real world.
Re:I am Jack's total lack of surprise. (Score:4, Informative)
QA was probably done on linear loads which is where the meters would be accurate. On noisy switch mode loads (VSDs, computer power supplies, etc) there was probably minimal QA. Quite likely because regulation has not caught up with the prevalence of these loads. It is a case of meter manufacturers not keeping up with the time. And yes, I have seen this on a large scale; I ran into one power meter with a 200kW difference from the 1MW VSD it was down-stream of. And that was with some harmonic filters installed on the drive, yet the meter still read less than the drive. I'm inclined to suspect the meter here.
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Naw, this is unlikely. Probably a bad energy provider. The utilities do test this stuff, I've seen them. We test some meters too.
It's yet another "smart meters are evil" story, finding the tiny fraction that screws up and trying to make it look like everything is broken.
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Last I checked, 78% of all meters used in the country the study was done in wasn't a "tiny fraction".
The majority of meters did not correctly measure power usage. 56% of them measured power usage much greater than was actually being used.
Re:I am Jack's total lack of surprise. (Score:5, Informative)
56% measured power usage much greater than what was actually being used in a ridiculous corner case scenario involving a parallel string of identical low-quality LED lights with an absolutely dismal power factor, connected to a dimmer to make the power factor even more extreme. Read the actual article with the current waveforms. They looks like something a 2 year old scribbled on a piece of paper, not a sine wave.
Yes, there's a certification failure here (meters are not tested with non-sinusoidal current loads), but no, nobody's meter is actually measuring 6 times real power usage in reality. The moment you have any reasonable loads in parallel the current waveform will start being something more reasonably approximating a sine wave and the meter will read more accurately.
This is the actual list of tests from the article:
So no, unless your whole house consists of crappy LED and CFL lights behind a huge shared dimmer at a 135 degrees setting, and no other appliances, your meter isn't going to read 600% of real energy consumption. To even get 164% readings you still need everything behind a dimmer at 90 degrees.
Re:I am Jack's total lack of surprise. (Score:4, Interesting)
Does an analog meter measure the amount of energy correctly? If yes: it's criminal to impose a mandatory change to the new meter.
Re:I am Jack's total lack of surprise. (Score:5, Interesting)
Does it measure the incorrect amount of energy? Yes. Is it defective? Yes. Are the testing standard broken? Yes. Are people actually being charged 6 times their power usage in practice? No.
As I said, there is a certification failure here, but the headline and the statistic that all of these news sites are parrotting is pure clickbait.
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56% measured power usage much greater than what was actually being used in a ridiculous corner case scenario
As you say, 56% measured power usage much greater than actual usage.
I don't give a flying fuck how corner case the scenario was, I don't want to pay for electricity I'm not using. Give me an accurate meter or face annual small claims court cases for refunds on your fraudulent charging.
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You can go to small claims court all you like, just don't expect to cite this study and automatically get an 83% refund on your electricity bill. You're going to have to prove that you're actually being overcharged and that your meter actually has excessive readings in your case (unless this becomes a class action, which would probably involve a much more detailed study under practical conditions and yield some average refund given the average amount overcharged).
All I'm saying is the chances of you being c
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What I can do is point out several years of annual electricity usage in my house and ask why there's a big fucking jump the day the smart meter was installed.
Yeah, I do have records.
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Most modern PC PSUs have power factor correction circuitry (it's mandatory in Europe) and wouldn't cause these kinds of wild readings.
Re:I am Jack's total lack of surprise. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Here's how it works in California. PUC guarantees a fixed level of income to the utilities. If the utilities can conserve energy usage then they make more profit. So it's in their best interest to make things very accurate. If they swing things to charge customers more, then they can be in big trouble with the PUCs, who do investigate. Especially any industrial or commercial power user will be very intent on making sure their bill is accurate.Your assumption seems to be that every utility, even customer
Re:I am Jack's total lack of surprise. (Score:4, Informative)
The smart meter freaks out for no reason and charges you $500 extra. You complain to the utility, they say it's your fault. You complain to PUC, they ask you for proof. You have none. Congrats, you're now out $500.
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If this kind of problem had happened with my old meter, I would've had no recourse. With my smart meter, I can turn on/off stuff in the house and check the meter's reading if I suspect something fishy i
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The spinning disc has a label saying that 1 revolution = X Wh. You can also read the counter once, wait ten seconds and read it again. Wait a whole minute if you want a more accurate reading.
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A cure for which there is no disease (Score:3, Interesting)
There is no discernible reason to invest scarce resources in "smart meters" (which are looking more like "dumb meters"). Ordinary old-style meters do an adequate job, and give employment to a lot of meter-readers. (That's a good thing, by the way). They are sufficiently accurate.
The arguments in favour of "smart meters" are ridiculous. Putting meter-readers out of work to save the company a small amount of money is a bad idea. Besides, most customers would be happy to read their own meters and send in the results by Web or phone. I do.
Transmitting people's energy consumption by wireless is completely insane. This is private information that does not need to be broadcast insecurely to anyone with the right black box.
Most normal people already have an excellent idea of how much energy they are using (often this is "too much", as in "I told you to turn off those lights!" or "Do you have any idea how much it costs to leave that running for so long?") If they really want to know in more detail, there are a lot of very nice cheap little meters you can install and read yourself.
Controlling people's energy supply by wireless is beyond insane - it is literally criminal. It's bad enough that energy suppliers would be able to switch off the supply on a whim (or a computer error). But those guys with the black box could do it too.
The only logical motive for installing "smart meters" is for the manufacturers to make loads of money. And that isn't a proper motive at all.
Re:A cure for which there is no disease (Score:5, Insightful)
You're underestimating the value of predictive data in stabilizing the grid... and throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Getting smart meters up to snuff on privacy, accuracy, and useful features is a worthy endeavor. Saying "hulk hate smart meters, hulk smash!" is not.
Data grid stability does not require per-user data (Score:3, Insightful)
It is even much cheaper and more accurate to measure the power where a multitude of users are connected.
The only reason for the introduction of "smart meters" has been to collect personal data to sell and to con people into more expenses for their particular pattern of power usage.
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Of course, they could do this before smart meters, as well, as we've had individual metering for decades.
Smart meters, implemented properly, provide the consumer a fair bit of insight into their actual usage; I can sign in to my provider's site and get my instantaneous usage, as well as 15-
Re:A cure for which there is no disease (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: A cure for which there is no disease (Score:2)
Start with, "hulk hate smart meter". Then the utilities will salvage the data prediction at least for their use. Be rational, they will grudgingly agree to look in the matter at some unspecified level of sincerity at some unspecified time frame.
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You're underestimating the value of predictive data in stabilizing the grid... and throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Time-of-use meters do the job just fine, because they can't switch your house on and off remotely anyway. (Smart meters with this functionality do exist; as far as I know, it is usually an additional-cost item and seldom installed.) The smallest unit they can switch remotely is the substation. In order to switch anything smaller, they have to send out a human. And it was working fine before to monitor usage at the substation level, but to charge people for their monthly usage using tiers based on the old me
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Plenty of places have electric companies who send tones down the line to receivers in your fusebox that switch various loads in your house. Electric hot water is one, pool pumps are another. For a lower rate, you get a certain number of guaranteed "on" hours a day and the power company gets to turn off your pool pump during peak hours.
Of course, you don't need a smart meter for this, you can use a "ripple control receiver", like they have been doing for the last 40+ years..... but that isn't shiny new tech.
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"Getting smart meters up to snuff on privacy"
You're a fucking moron if you trust your power company to keep shit private, given history.
"Hey, LEO, this guy's using a lot of power, looks like a grow operation going on with regular 12-hour and 18-hour power spikes on a timer."
That you think privacy even exists is fucking laughable, it demonstrates just how ignorant of reality you truly are. Bet you voted Democrat, Republican, or Liberal, didn't you? It would figure, since none of you fuckers have a goddamned
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Well fucking sign up for commercial power supplies if you don't want your abuse of a consumer supply to be noticed and addressed.
Re:A cure for which there is no disease (Score:4, Insightful)
If the majority of the meters are giving us bad data, their predictive data may well have a negative value.
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What new data are smart meters giving us?
That's a very good question to ask... your local utility operators and legislators, because the answer will vary locally [wikipedia.org]. Some installations are pretty advanced, others really should not even be calling themselves "smart meters".
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Old style meters were broken, very difficult to calibrate, and the mechanics wear out over time. Ordinary people often screw up. Ie, in Bakersfield they blamed cost hikes on PG&E even though they were in the middle of a heat wave and using more air conditioning than normal, independent investigation found no fault.
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Old style meters were broken,
How so ? Do you mean accounting for power factor ?
very difficult to calibrate,
Isn't this done only once at the factory ?
and the mechanics wear out over time.
Original meters (had off-peak service, so extra meter) lasted 40+ years on this house, and were only replaced when the utility went to the first generation wireless meter that could be read by the utility truck as it drove by the house. Those of course were then replaced less than ten years later by a smart meter. I honestly do not see modern equipment lasting as long as those mechanical meters. Even if they don't fa
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Broken? Not unless you used too large a magnet to stop them.
It was best to use an electromagnet on a timer, so the meter would be running when the reader came by and your bill wasn't 0.
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Sure it does (Score:2)
Privatize the profit and socialize the expense. This is why you don't let companies run essential services for profit.
Re:A cure for which there is no disease (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, what we discovered from these various collection mechanisms was that the human meter readers were making up an awful lot of readings and not actually visiting the meters at all in many cases. If they're not going to bother going it'd have been better for our customers if they just didn't report rather than making up a number, we could model a more accurate number .
Steamshovels scheamschmovels. Give 'em spoons. (Score:3)
Here's a better thing, then: employ pairs of meter readers, where one does odd digits and the other does the evens.
Belay last pipe! Stupid idea. They'd have to read the digits to know if they were odd or even.
*ping*
Have a third guy who looks at the meter and tells the other two which digits to read.
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" There is no discernible reason ... "
It seems you haven't looked very hard. Where I live, we get a billing statement with a graph showing our usage for each day of the month, and highlighting the peak usage period(s). The recent month is compared to the same month last year. This, and related information, can be useful for the consumer and the utility.
More importantly, the meters are necessary for the near future when Uber pricing is imposed (you pay more during peak demand periods). I'm sure there are oth
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Transmitting people's energy consumption by wireless is completely insane. This is private information that does not need to be broadcast insecurely to anyone with the right black box.
Putting it on display in a location where a meter reader can get to it also, necessarily, means putting it on display in a location where anyone with at least one good eye can see it. The black box is a red herring.
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Not really. My meter is inside my house, so a meter reader needs to knock on my door and ask for permission to enter.
On the flipside, I let anybody wearing some random badge come in and check the meter, so just knock if you want to take a look.
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Not really. My meter is inside my house, so a meter reader needs to knock on my door and ask for permission to enter.
On the flipside, I let anybody wearing some random badge come in and check the meter, so just knock if you want to take a look.
And you have to take half a day off whenever the meter reader comes by.
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I don't know what reasons you were given for using smart meters, but where I live accuracy and saving the wages of people wasn't the ones we were given. It boiled down to one thing: being able to pass the real cost of power to the
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give employment to a lot of meter-readers. (That's a good thing, by the way)
I disagree, but more importantly, so does my power provider. They ask me to take my own meter readings, and submit them online.
Re: A cure for which there is no disease (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather reap the benefits of lower priced electricity.
"Sir, we apologize if you somehow received the impression that that was an option... but it is not. Is there anything else we can help you with?"
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Trump just increased their budget by 10% so unemployment should fall. Who says Trump doesnt keep his promises
"over-inflate" (Score:2)
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How are the companies doing? (Score:2)
Everyone here should know that the best possible and worst possible cases are usually extremely artificial and almost never happen.
So I am curious about what has the actual impact of this has been? Because if companies managed to charge 5X what they did before, while delivering the same amount of power, the profits would have soared in an amazing manner. And that probably hasn't happened, because then this would have been noticed far sooner.
So I am curious about if a measure of the resulting average error c
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Exactly: this demands investigation to see who dropped the ball and why (incompetence? proft?). And while we are at it, let's take them to task for the privacy/security issues, and see whether they are buying units that are actually providing useful features for the future grid, or just short-sightedly checking off legislative requirements.
Anyway, since this is a tech site, this is the part of the article I would have pulled out:
After finishing their lab experiment, researchers dismantled the smart meters to understand the problem. Following their efforts, the three-man research team discovered that smart meters which gave abnormally high readings used a Rogowski Coil in their setup, while the smart meters that gave out low readings used Hall effect-based sensors.
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There is equipment that is not too expensive to calibrate meters. Any reputable utility would have used them. Blame the dumb dutch utilities and not all smart meters everywhere.
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The problem AIUI is that you won't see the overreading with a simple resistive test load hooked up. Only when you start shoving a heap of harmonics down the line.
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this demands investigation to see who dropped the ball and why (incompetence? proft?).
Some countries at least seem to be getting it right. Here's coverage of this from New Zealand [nzherald.co.nz] in which the meter vendors point out that they use mostly current transformers and shunt resistors, a tiny fraction use Hall effect sensors, and none use Rogowski coils.
This is the worst possible case (Score:2)
Incidentally, problems with measuring works like this are the secret behind 'free energy' demonstrations!
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Incandescent lighting is substantially dead; and that's a bunch of neat resistive load that has been handed off to the low-bidder PSUs crammed into CCFLs and LED 'bulbs', consumer electronics widgets often have slightly nicer quality; but also produce all kinds of weird line noise. That pretty much leaves you with the refrigerator, stove(if electric), and AC(if any). Doesn't mean that measuring is going to be easy; but
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What exactly is the problem? (Score:2)
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An older analog meter spinning would not give the correct solar import, export data.
Once the analog meter is replaced the new meter is solar ready or solar and battery account ready.
Modifying exisiting meters (Score:2)
Exactly what I thought. A very simple device could be attached to the front of the meter and simply count the number of times the little black mark goes by. Not really a web cam, just a very simple system much like in an optical mouse. And there is probably enough EM radiation in the area to power the thing.
This would avoid the huge cost of having electricians come out and rewire the house.
But if one was installed, I'd like to keep the old meter in series, as a check.
Re: (Score:2)
You really do want a webcam. If you must combine it with counting the black marks for relatively real-time power consumption, then by all means, do that. But you want to read off the dials so that you don't get confused if there's a period during which you can't count marks.
I've been emailing photos of my meter to my meter readers for over a year now... I would automate it, but it's not exactly a hardship to bop out back with the cellphone. We're treed up enough here that I can do it in... my robe.
How do you make them read low? (Score:2)
No really usefull comments yet. How do I use this to get something for nothing.
Not a surprise. (Score:2)
We've had the same thing happening in Ontario and in BC. [emrabc.ca] Because of similar problems Just remember the bullshit they peddled [ctvnews.ca] that that it was supposed to lower electricity costs too. Which is why every place they've been installed, the cost of electricity has skyrocketed. And in many working. [newsforont...percent.ca]
I doubt it (Score:2, Informative)
I didn't recognize any of the meters in the pictures. The big makers L+G, Itron, Elster and Senses go through an insane a
Re: (Score:2)
Actually PG&E has time based rates. However they charge more during the day and less at night. This is because even though Solar is more available during the day most of the Industrial load is during the day when factories are running. However as more and more people are adding solar and selling it back the equation is changing. However PGE still wants its profits so now it buys Solar during the day at the rates it charge folks at night but sells it at the higher daytime rate. This means its more profit
Re: (Score:2)
Lastly ask some former meter readers from Texas and the US south how much they miss being bitten by dogs and shot at while reading meters.
I'm not so sure, because they are unemployed now, since the smart meters took their job.
What's the problem? (Score:2)
There should be a roughly equal number of people who have been undercharged, rigtht?
Dear ManisH1B (Score:2)
Ask yourself a question: given that inflate (in a context like this which is not to do with footballs or Zeppelins) means to make something bigger than it should be, what would under-inflate mean?
So why the fuck so you feel the need to stick over in there?
We have 30+M meters in Italy (Score:3)
Their smartness is undeniable. It's the point of view to be questioned, though.
new bulbs on dimmers biggest problem (Score:2)
FTA:"The greatest inaccuracies were seen when researchers combined dimmers with energy saving light bulbs and LED bulbs"
Re: (Score:2)
Nonsense, Seattle is trying to move poor people out of valuable apartments and into much cheaper tents.