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Smart meters, less smart companies

Black Hole said:
We should only be paying for real power.
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Unlike decades ago domestic consumers can/do buy equipment that has a very non-linear power consumption. Being charged for apparent power (and perhaps distorted waveforms) seems reasonable and might encourage them to buy less 'unharmonious' products.
 
everthewatcher said:
Not clear what you're quoting but that looks to me like a bit of confusion over real and apparent power.
One of the main criticisms of smart meters is that, among other things, they can be remotely set to measure real or apparent power. Real power is what traditional meters measure but modern electronics don't behave like resistive loads and can have power factors way off unity as the current leads the voltage. So switching to apparent power where the phase relationship between voltage and current is ignored means higher bills.
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The quotes are from the source you supplied at smartme.co.uk.
MikeSh said:
Unlike decades ago domestic consumers can/do buy equipment that has a very non-linear power consumption. Being charged for apparent power (and perhaps distorted waveforms) seems reasonable and might encourage them to buy less 'unharmonious' products.
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I acquired a new fridge freezer about ten years ago. The result was an immediate and highly visible drop in consumption, which was good for me and presumably the environment. My Aura doesn't heat the room to the extent the DTR1000 did. You buy what you can get hold of, and the supply isn't going to get better in the immediate future.
Trev said:
And will continue to do so regardless of whether I have one fitted or not. (I won't).
It's not the smart meters anyway, it's the gobby tree huggers winning again.
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I'm not sure my neighbour would entirely appreciate being characterised in those terms, but green-ness is certainly a higher priority for her. She doesn't want a smart meter either, and can see no use for the display. In a small flat you know what's powered on. She suggests accuracy may have improved but I'm not sure of her source.
What worries me is that from official figures about a quarter of these things apparently don't actually call home. A smart meter not operating in smart mode is not a smart meter, and shouldn't legitimately count towards any target.
 
Ex Libris said:
You buy what you can get hold of
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I agree - it's no skin off the makers' noses.

And anyway - so what if a few domestic appliances are phase leading or lagging, power is power and that's what requires energy to generate and supply. That the current waveform is offset means the supply infrastructure requires greater capacity, but no more energy is required.

Big industrial motors have a huge inductive lag, any capacitive lead from domestic SMPS will be a drop in the ocean (and help to balance it out).
 
Black Hole said:
Big industrial motors have a huge inductive lag, any capacitive lead from domestic SMPS will be a drop in the ocean (and help to balance it out).
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It may be, but as invertor control becomes the norm this may change the other way. Also remember large consumers are billed on apparent power so have an incentive keep their power factor close to unity.
 
It occurs to me that it's much easier for electronic meters (not necessarily "smart" meters, as opposed to the spinny-wheel meters) to measure "apparent power"... so I wonder whether we're already subject to that?! I have an electronic electric meter :(
 
Black Hole said:
It occurs to me that it's much easier for electronic meters (not necessarily "smart" meters, as opposed to the spinny-wheel meters) to measure "apparent power"... so I wonder whether we're already subject to that?! I have an electronic electric meter :(
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It's very easy for them to measure real power as they have access to both current and voltage. There are dedicated ICs to sense both - I've got some here. It's the remote display inductive clamp 'energy monitors' that indicate apparent power as they can only measure current.
 
Black Hole said:
I am aware of that, but there have been electronic digital meters around for a long time!
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Well yes, and they have to behave as mechanical meters do.

The basic measurement is a multiplication and doesn't have to be done digitally - I used a four-quadrant analogue multiplier (on something unconnected with power metering) back in the late 70s.
 
I prefer my less than smart meters. Gritish Bass have just requested the meter readings, so I've read the analogue meters and entered the values into their website. That's as smart as I'm getting.
 
EEPhil said:
I prefer my less than smart meters. Gritish Bass have just requested the meter readings, so I've read the analogue meters and entered the values into their website. That's as smart as I'm getting.
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Meters here are digital for the electricity, swapped 29/1/02, and mechanical for the gas with a 1992 date on it. Submit readings at the end of the month when I take them for my records and on the 13th which is when Avro want them. With a smart meter I'd still have to take the readings EoM.
The water meter has remote reading head on it for drive-by reading but in practise practice they still send someone to read them by eyeball.
 
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For some reason, I can't remember what, I started reading the meters every day and sticking the results - eventually - into a spreadsheet. I was going to do something with that data, but now it's just a habit. Anyway, that's smart enough for my use. The utility companies can have the reading at the end of three months and not have my usage under the microscope.
 
I think people are getting a bit carried away by urban myths here, let us start with a few definitions, there is V x A Watts ( or apparent Watts) and there is V x A x PF (power factor) or real Watts, the old spinning wheel meter could only measure real Watts, but a smart meter measures V and A and PF so there is the possibility for a smart meter to ignore PF and just calculate VA Watts but it doesn't, do you really think anyone would allow that to happen?, both first generation (SMETS1) and second generation (SMETS2) meters only report the use of real Watts not VA Watts
 
Ezra Pound said:
I think people are getting a bit carried away by urban myths here, let us start with a few definitions, there is V x A Watts ( or apparent Watts) and there is V x A x PF (power factor) or real Watts, the old spinning wheel meter could only measure real Watts, but a smart meter measures V and A and PF so there is the possibility for a smart meter to ignore PF and just calculate VA Watts but it doesn't, do you really think anyone would allow that to happen?, both first generation (SMETS1) and second generation (SMETS2) meters only report the use of real Watts not VA Watts
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Not getting carried away.

It is acknowledged that Smart meters can report real (W) and/or apparent (VA) power and, given that that apparent is usually higher than real, there's going to be a temptation to switch to it using some justification along the lines of conductors needing to be upgraded to cope with non-unity PF loads. The highest domestic loads have traditionally been heating, both space and water, which has a PF of 1. But in future the the highest load will probably be electric car charging - what's the PF for these?
 
VA watts can only be higher or equal to real Watts, I have no way of knowing what data is sent back to the central communication network (DCC), but I can prove that I am being billed for real Watts because I can measure both VA and real Watts, I am sure there are people in the UK who are monitoring this a lot closer than I am and power companies would not get away with using VA measurements any more than they could from falsifying 'spinning wheel' numbers, users monitor this stuff
 
everthewatcher said:
Meters here are digital for the electricity, swapped 29/1/02, and mechanical for the gas with a 1992 date on it. Submit readings at the end of the month when I take them for my records and on the 13th which is when Avro want them. With a smart meter I'd still have to take the readings EoM.
The water meter has remote reading head on it for drive-by reading but in practise practice they still send someone to read them by eyeball.
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Funnily enough, Southern Water don't seem to ever got around to installing any of these devices. It must have dawned on them, without further prompting by me, you couldn't send a midget to drive through corridors on a unicycle opening 50 odd ceiling hatches and preserve your credibility. My neighbour swears by her legacy water meter (only one or two ever installed).
No response from SSE after five working days. I'm still confused. My latest research suggests you can't have a smart meter with an immersion heater. The smart meters installed have all lights flashing except second left, which is blank. Current (sorry) meter is marked two wire. Don't you need four for Economy 7?
 
No. power used during the day is std and power used at night are E7. The timing of day/night varies with provider I believe.You do however need a meter capable of doing the split.
 
Trev said:
No. power used during the day is std and power used at night are E7. The timing of day/night varies with provider I believe.You do however need a meter capable of doing the split.
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The letter states my "new off-peak hours" are 00.30-07.30 and 01.30-08.30. The worst of it is I've not used the storage heater for years. There's no point in paying to be uncomfortable in a different way.
I've never experienced a satisfactory heated environment, and I can remember the Winter of '63. You're invariably cold one side and burning on the other. With a storage heater it's delayed. You switch it on when you're cold and the next day you're sweating.
 
Black Hole said:
Presumably that was a talk by the makers of small nuclear reactors, or the suppliers of uranium.
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Someone who made the borers that made the channel tunnel, actually, but possible a paid advocate of nuclear.
 
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