Smart Meters

[buckeyefarmer]

Can someone with a smart meter tell me if they bill based on KWH or KVAH? I have a feeling you are now billed for your PF, which you never had before.

 

[Leejohn]

I'm billed for KWH and right now it's $.0765. BUT they are saying I used 5033 KWH and last year it was 4348 and that was high. The weather hasn't been that cold, it might of got down to 18 deg. one night last mo. The new meter was in also last year, in 2011 with old meter it was 3382kwh and I haven't added anything at all if anything less. You can't even buy a good light bulb anymore to use more if we want to. I better stop reading this thread the old blood pressure is building.

 

[ultrarunner]

I'm billed for KWH and right now it's $.0765. BUT they are saying I used 5033 KWH and last year it was 4348 and that was high. The weather hasn't been that cold, it might of got down to 18 deg. one night last mo. The new meter was in also last year, in 2011 with old meter it was 3382kwh and I haven't added anything at all if anything less. You can't even buy a good light bulb anymore to use more if we want to. I better stop reading this thread the old blood pressure is building.

I have thought this too... too bad there was not an option to compare the old and the new side-by-side...

I've raised the question with my utility and the response is the new meters are more accurate at low consumption and the old ones were not... things like a cell phone charger were not enough to overcome inertia...

I have no idea other than my electric usage for a single 12w photocell operated night light has gone up several fold... there is nothing else on this circuit.

In dollars and cents it is a mute point because with either meter the low usage always meant I had to pay the default minimum monthly charge.

 

[Mace Canute]

Yes I sure say they should be regulated, but I have never seen a meter replaced unless it's broke or up dated and never seen anyone spot checking any. The gas and weight scales are checked all the time. You still need a meter you have to go by something. I wonder who does regulate them? The only decal I have seen on them is "passed"
If they can read the meter and turn off and on your power from a remote place i don' see any reason they can't speed it up and slow down. I have a old meter that runs off of a new meter and I think I well shut everything down that is pulling off the new meter, but the shop that has old meter. That might tell me what I want to know? te

Electric meters are regulated for accuracy. Here in Canada, Measurements Canada sets the standards for them. A residential meter is allowed a maximum of 3% plus or minus deviation and a commercial meter is allowed a 1.5% plus or minus deviation. In all my years working in District for our provincial electrical utility I heard of one meter that was fast...it was on a farm transformer pole that had been hit by lightning and presumably it was damaged by the strike and I personally tested one meter that was 7% fast. Of the meters I did test, they rarely over registered and when they did it wasn't more than 0.5 percent. Most registered a percent or two slow. The only time I did a meter test in the field was if a customer complained about a high bill so that's why I never found any really slow ones, those people were happy with their bill! (I only did residential meter checks, we had a meter installer who took care of the commercial/industrial meters.)

Every year we had to take samples meters for testing. Measurements Canada selected which meters by serial number and we would go out and remove them and install new meters. Those removed meters would be sent in for accuracy checks and if a certain percentage or over failed the test, we had to go out and change all the meters from that manufactures batch. Some years we would change out thousands of them! Some of those old meters were very inaccurate with the odd one up to 60 percent slow! These were the old "clockwork" meters and since they were mechanical, they would slow down. The instances of over registering were so rare that for all practical purposes you could say it just didn't happen...like I said, 2 out of tens of thousands were all I knew about. The new meters were accurate and the consequence of that was some customers could get quite an increase in their bill sometimes.

Residential meters are always kilowatt meters. Industrial/commercial customers can have either kilowatt or KVA meters, depending on the utilities policies. Smart meters can register either watts or voltamps depending on how they are programmed. If the utility had the legal authority to change their residential billing to KVA from Kilowatts, it would be a simple matter to reprogram the meters via the same method used to read them in conjunction to a simple change in their billing system.

BTW, going back to residential meters always being kilowatt meters, this is why any devices being hawked by companies to correct power factor in residences for the purposes of reducing your electrical bill are totally ineffective. They can correct the power factor but since your not being charged for a bad PF in the first place, it's impossible for them to reduce your bill.

 

[dmccarty]

Can someone with a smart meter tell me if they bill based on KWH or KVAH? I have a feeling you are now billed for your PF, which you never had before.

I have logged every power bill since we built the house. For the first few years we had a dumb meter then it was replaced with a smart meter. No difference in our bills which are based on KWH.

Later,
Dan

 

[techman]

Electric meters are regulated for accuracy.....

Nice to see an informed post. The new electronic, or "smart" meters are required to be as accurate as the older models. As was pointed out, the likelihood of an older meter being slow, due to mechanical aging, is significant. When someone gets a new, smart meter and see an increase in his/her bill, it is likely that they were underpaying with the old mechanical meter. If you feel you are a victim of an inaccurate meter, contact the utility. They will likely change your meter. Additional complaints will result in additional monitoring with a second meter, usually for a day or two.

There seems to be a lot of fear and concern that the utility will somehow cut off you appliances or some other form of manipulation of your power, but none of that is in the utilities best interest. They are out to sell power ! The only significant issue at stake is that the grid is at capacity in many locations. Overall generation is available, but delivering it to user locations can often stress the transmission infrastructure. One goal of the "smart grid" is to better balance supply and demand. That includes "load shedding" which is already done today in worst case conditions. Industries sometimes need to reduce load, and occasionally rolling blackouts are needed. Smart grid offers the possibility of load shedding with more of a scalpel, rather than a machete. Today utilities can only see loads on a substation feed basis: large blocks of users. In the smart grid world, load distribution will be much more granular, and that information may actually preserve power to some users in power starved conditions.

paul

 

[Leejohn]

Very interesting. If I'm indeed using that much that's fine, just doesn't seem that way from year to year.

 

[houstonscott]

How about getting EPA off our backs so we can build new gas fired electric plants so we have plenty of cheap power in the future, and quit trying to manage a decreasing power grid better or what the government thinks is more fair.

HS

 

[chopped]

How about getting EPA off our backs so we can build new gas fired electric plants so we have plenty of cheap power in the future, and quit trying to manage a decreasing power grid better or what the government thinks is more fair.

HS

:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::cool2::cool2::cool2::cool2::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup:

And if i could get a cheaper rate I would do laundry etc at night.But with washing all cold water I guess that the washer does really use much power anyways..

 

[ultrarunner]

My 1922 house had a meter so old the supervisor said they were going to put it on display... no meter socket so it was changed out months after all the neighbors.

The original tech had never seen anything like it in the 4 years he was on the job.

Lots of Brass/Copper parts.