smart meters

LsFarm wrote:Just get me my standard meter back.. the one that gives me $120 dollar monthly bills..
Greg L

There is no way you will get your identical old non-smart meter back. Your utility company will have specification and testing standards for calibrating any meter put in service. This is likely a technical requirement imposed by your state's power company regulators. So, let's suppose you are successful at getting an new properly calibrated non-smart meter and it bills larger bills than you had in the past. Will you be happy? Of course not. You need to understand fully the power you are consuming and leave the politics out of it. Only then will you have a viable choice to reduce your power consumption. If your old meter was under billing significantly there may be nothing that you can do that's cost effective to reduce you bill to the old amounts.

CapeCoaler wrote:Like load balancing and the joys of 3 phase being more efficient...

I have 3 phase in my garage,and if you wanted to install 3 phase you need to "prove" that your motors will be using 40% of the total electric usage. My house is $.10/KWH and 3 phase garage is $.19/KWH with PECO electric.

Greg,since Pa. deregulated the electric I get phone calls or snail mail to change elec. co. every day. And it's pathethic the way Asphlunch trims all around the wires and let 20' branches hang through the wires and over the road, job security I guess

I scaned this brochure that came with my bill, hope it will help.The web site is there to look at the technology meter

I'm being pushed to my limits..

Greg

.. and you think he is grumpy now, just wait until the FAA sends out the next NOTAM.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tc1yyXJdrA

lsayre wrote:Greg, I suggest calling your power company and insist that they remove the smart meter and replace it with a standard meter.

I did this, and there is no "OPT out" program.. only if you barricade the meter from the new instalation, then refuse access to the property for anything but 'service and reading' the EXSISTING meter.

I HIGHLY doubt that the old meter was reading low.. the new meter is reading some new pardigm of '*censored* the consumer'..

We do NOT have time of day or peak hour billing.. yet that appears to be what DTE is now doing.

I'll just run my genset on vegetable oil all summer, the veggie oil is free, and I'll turn on the main breaker every night for a few hours.. I'll run the AC in my mom's apartment and in the house on the genset,,

Or I'll cough up $5-7K and install a solar grid that will offset 50% of my current use..

I have all this coal,, weaned myself from most of the propane tit.. and along comes the next screw job..

I'll get ahead of this.. not sure how yet,, but I'll cut them way back,
I can't wait till they send a 'tech' to check on the meter.. That person will have their ears smoking and their ass on fire before they get back to the mailbox..

And the beauty is that while I'm on medical disablity, I'm here 95% of the time.. so I can catch and confront the sob's..

Greg L

Yanche wrote:

LsFarm wrote:Just get me my standard meter back.. the one that gives me $120 dollar monthly bills..
Greg L

There is no way you will get your identical old non-smart meter back. Your utility company will have specification and testing standards for calibrating any meter put in service. This is likely a technical requirement imposed by your state's power company regulators. So, let's suppose you are successful at getting an new properly calibrated non-smart meter and it bills larger bills than you had in the past. Will you be happy? Of course not. You need to understand fully the power you are consuming and leave the politics out of it. Only then will you have a viable choice to reduce your power consumption. If your old meter was under billing significantly there may be nothing that you can do that's cost effective to reduce you bill to the old amounts.

Hi Yanche, like you said in an earlier post, the old meter is unlikely to have been out of calibration, and the new one is also very unlikely to be out..

This is reading 'ghost' KWH's.. how is a NON Electrical Engineer supposed to go through their service panel, and 'balance it??
How do I go about doing this.. ???

Can an induction meter read the individual legs of the 220 coming from the street?? or do I somehow have to 'read' each circuit on each leg and swap wires or CB's to get a 'balance'..

Right now I've tripped the breaker on the shop.. NO ghost KWH's there.. the three circulators for the P/S hydronic floor heat for the shop are not needed this week,, gonna be in the 60's.
But the GHSJE$R###%%%^$$%$#$ DTE doesn't have a meter for me to read on the S.Meter.. there are a bunch of different pages, all cryptic. all in some damned code.
At least with the old analog I could read the meter, now it's like I'm a F$##%$%$ dog looking at the TV...

This whole deal is just a huge pissoff.. I've got to do something.. maybe live in the dark..
with kerosene lamps..
Greg

Can you log into the power co's website and read your meter?
Then you could watch live on a wireless laptop as you flip switches/breakers...
Just not the one powering your internet unless you have cell tower wireless...
Hey you did say you were home for a while...
It seems against consumers rights if you can not read the meter at the meter...
They have all the laws about pricing at stores/shops/pumps...
seems that would apply to the meter in some fashion...
Here ya go...


http://www.pge.com/smartmeter/

http://www.dteenergy.com/residentialCustomers/productsPrograms/electric/remoteMeteringFAQ.html

http://www.dteenergy.com/residentialCustomers/billingPayment/meterReading/amiMeterRead.html

They do have time of day...
http://www.dteenergy.com/residentialCustomers/billingPayment/electricRate/calculator.html

I'm far from being alone in my complaints and concerns.

http://michiganstopsmartmeters.com/

Read the blog about higher bills.. my problem is minor.

I've found bills and proven that the reported use has gone up since the smart meter was installed..

Greg L

It makes me wonder if it's the meters or the electric Co., how could it be that smart meters work so well for my relatively small co-op & then others can have huge problems.

LsFarm wrote:I'm far from being alone in my complaints and concerns.

http://michiganstopsmartmeters.com/

Read the blog about higher bills.. my problem is minor.

I've found bills and proven that the reported use has gone up since the smart meter was installed..

Greg L

I did a quick look at the filings at the Michigan government agency that regulates utilities. Most of the formal complaints concern possible health issues related to the RF energy radiated from the smart meters. That will turn out to be a non issue.

The bottom line is until you can independently measure your power consumption and compare it to that measured by the power company's meter you will get nowhere. Anything else is just talk and BS.

I just had a thought (don't laugh)
Last summer, I installed a meter box that has a main breaker inline, after the meter. This way, I can replace all the wiring and Main Dist Panel in this old house, without worrying about killing power at the meter. Just flip off the main breaker in the meter box, and I can replace the SEC cable, to the Main Dist Panel, plus all the subpanels.
If I had issues with the way my currently installed meter was calculating usage (I don't), I could easily wire in another meter box (with 2nd meter), on my side of the Power Company's meter. That way, at least you could see if the two meters report the same usage.
Heres a good meter to wire in, on your SEC....
http://www.ebay.com/itm/ICON-Electronic ... 2a1aee3e1d

200 AMP version...
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sensus-ICON-Ele ... 27c49eaa45

Yanche wrote:

LsFarm wrote:I'm far from being alone in my complaints and concerns.

http://michiganstopsmartmeters.com/

Read the blog about higher bills.. my problem is minor.

I've found bills and proven that the reported use has gone up since the smart meter was installed..

Greg L

I did a quick look at the filings at the Michigan government agency that regulates utilities. Most of the formal complaints concern possible health issues related to the RF energy radiated from the smart meters. That will turn out to be a non issue.

The bottom line is until you can independently measure your power consumption and compare it to that measured by the power company's meter you will get nowhere. Anything else is just talk and BS.

And that's where the utility has you by the short and curly hairs.. you can't get them to come an put in a second meter, the cost of rewiring thru a second meter is astronomical.. we're talking 0000 wire here, a 200 amp service.

I've looked at the website's graphs for my usage,, and it's interesting to see the errors they post.. whole weeks of zero use. Since I've lost power twice this months billing period, it will be interesting to see what their lying graphs show.

Greg L.

LsFarm wrote:you can't get them to come an put in a second meter, the cost of rewiring thru a second meter is astronomical.. we're talking 0000 wire here, a 200 amp service. .

4x0 by 3 SEC is around $3.00 per foot. I paid $1.85 per foot from a Electrical Distributer. You only need about 3 or 4 feet, if you mount the new meter box below or alongside the old meter box, just make sure the SEC coming out the old meter box is long enough to cable up to the new meter box. The 3' piece of new SEC will run from the old meter to the input side of the new meter. The existing SEC will be installed on the output side of the 2nd meter
Your electric company has nothing to do with this wiring. Your electrician will install it, if you prefer.

30 minutes to 1 hour. Done.

Then you could sub-meter all the buildings...
Add all the subs up and verify against yourself too...
It would take four meters...
Main power in...
then 3 subs...
house, shop, boiler house...
You could play electric company...
Hangup on yourself, I could go on but you get the idea...
Just start with one but plan for the others space-wise...

I'm sure Yanche can explain it much better than I can, but my understanding is that the "old school" meters can only accurately measure electrical consumption with a Power Factor of 1.00 (i.e. pure resistive). Any load with a power factor of less than unity (1.00) will be underreported. Which loads have power factors less than unity? Pretty much anything with a motor, transformer, or other sort of inductance (computer power supplies, and probably even CFL's).

Furthermore, the typical single phase motor has absolutely horrible power factor. The best would be a any type with a "capacitor-run" design. The capacitor corrects the power factor (balances out the inductance). Many times industrial installations will have a bank of power factor correction capacitors on the pole and I think in some cases the power co. will charge extra when a company has a low overall power factor (lots of big motors).

If you don't have one already, go get a Kill-A-Watt meter. They are under $30 and measure frequency, voltage, amps, watts, kWh, and power factor. You can plug various devices into them and see where "ghost" power is going and what sort of things have lousy power factor.

Chris