Infrastructure improvements - Great! But for who's benefit?

[indyjohn]

Noticed this showed up on my house a couple of weeks ago. Great, the old one was original construction.


Looking around the neighborhood over the following days I realized every house in the neighborhood now has this new meter.

Fast forward to today. I'm driving out one of 3 entrances of the neighborhood (the one off of the emergency route road coincidently) and I spy four utility trucks, one with an auger and new large pole. I think "uh oh, somebody took a pole out, again". But I don't see a damaged pole anywhere. Strange.

I come back home some time later, same route and find this is now at the entry to the neighborhood.



Now, I am not an EE, but there's a whole lot going on there. It strikes me as a convenient coincidence for these two events occurring in quick succession in an area that has had a pretty stable grid for some time. If you look close, you'll see the meter has an RF ID.

I think the utility has established a gain of function. Comments?

 

[cburnworth]

The newer meters allow them to drive down the street & read the meter. They are also able to trace transformer/cap issues. The big drawback I see is the potential to shut down the meter for high usage.

 

[2in1evtime]

Anything new like this is never an advantage to the end user!!!!

 

[indyjohn]

The big drawback I see is the potential to shut down the meter for high usage any reason they wish.

FTFY.

 

[Cameramonkey]

FTFY.

But with the right knowledge, if that happens you can bypass the meter.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

Noticed this showed up on my house a couple of weeks ago. Great, the old one was original construction.
View attachment 231154

Looking around the neighborhood over the following days I realized every house in the neighborhood now has this new meter.

Fast forward to today. I'm driving out one of 3 entrances of the neighborhood (the one off of the emergency route road coincidently) and I spy four utility trucks, one with an auger and new large pole. I think "uh oh, somebody took a pole out, again". But I don't see a damaged pole anywhere. Strange.

I come back home some time later, same route and find this is now at the entry to the neighborhood.

View attachment 231157

Now, I am not an EE, but there's a whole lot going on there. It strikes me as a convenient coincidence for these two events occurring in quick succession in an area that has had a pretty stable grid for some time. If you look close, you'll see the meter has an RF ID.

I think the utility has established a gain of function. Comments?

That second photo kinda looks like a switch…probably remotely controlled. Could be they added a redundant feed to the existing circuit for back feeding in the event of a failure.

 

[BigRed]

"For who's benefit"?

Not yours.

 

[indyjohn]

That second photo kinda looks like a switch…probably remotely controlled. Could be they added a redundant feed to the existing circuit for back feeding in the event of a failure.

I don't know. But what's impressive is you can see the old pole just behind the big one, with its top cut off. They transferred those primary lines to the new pole with no interruption in service.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

I don't know. But what's impressive is you can see the old pole just behind the big one, with its top cut off. They transferred those primary lines to the new pole with no interruption in service.

Yeah…don’t try that at home.

 

[indyjohn]

That second photo kinda looks like a switch…probably remotely controlled. Could be they added a redundant feed to the existing circuit for back feeding in the event of a failure.

Upon further review....

I think you're onto something there, GFGT.
The mess up top is constructed to bring 7200V into 2 wires down that conduit (red arrow). The cans sitting on the framing are lightning or surge arrestors (blue arrow).


Down bottom we have a line wire and load wire going into the large box, presumably where the switch is located (red arrow). It has some sort of control device that is connected to an antenna (presumably the blue arrow).



Travelling up and down this road this evening, I found no less than three others in the same configuration within 2 miles. Interesting stuff, would love to have an INGOer that works in the business to explain further.

 

[Mikey1911]

Gridstream PLX Advanced Metering Solution - Landis+Gyr

Landis+Gyr is a pioneer in developing power line carrier (PLC) technologies designed specifically for advanced metering. The most recent advancement,

www.landisgyr.com

Here's the front page for the manufacturer of your new "intelligent" watt-hour meter, Landis and Gyr.

The pole hardware appears to be Power Line Carrier (PLC) communication equipment allowing for the "smart" Landis and Gyr meters along the distribution circuit to be monitored in real time.

Something I noticed on the meter display was the legend for "kVARH", or Kilo-VAR hours.

VAR means "Volt-Amperes Reactive" and is representative of the amount of energy used to maintain the magnetic field in inductive devices such as motors and transformers. The more VARs needed to power a device (or the devices in a residence), the more energy is needed to supply the load as VARs provide no useful work (useful work is measured in watts or kilowatts).

The old style rotating-disc watt-hour meters had no way of communicating with a data network, and had to be read manually. They weren't set up to read VARs (to do so, a special phase-shifting transformer would have to be added to the metering circuit), so utilities essentially had no way of knowing how much "imaginary" or "wattless" VARs were being consumed at individual residences.

Industrial and large commercial customers were different; the utility billing metering equipment was set up to read VAR-hours along with watt-hours, and impose an additional fee if the ratio of VAR-hours to watt-hours was too high (this can also referred to as "low power factor penalty billing").

What makes residential VAR metering important is that utility companies gain the ability to bill additional fees for loads that require (relatively) "large" amounts of reactive power. They can do this with a meter that can (in real-time) electronically compute "Real" power (kilowatt-hours, kWH), "Reactive" power (kilovar-hours, kVARH), and "Apparent" power (kilovolt-ampere-hours, kVAH).

Some utilities already have the ability to use PLC to command residential air conditioners to shut down during times of summertime peak energy demand.

 

[indyjohn]

Gridstream PLX Advanced Metering Solution - Landis+Gyr

Landis+Gyr is a pioneer in developing power line carrier (PLC) technologies designed specifically for advanced metering. The most recent advancement,

www.landisgyr.com

Here's the front page for the manufacturer of your new "intelligent" watt-hour meter, Landis and Gyr.

The pole hardware appears to be Power Line Carrier (PLC) communication equipment allowing for the "smart" Landis and Gyr meters along the distribution circuit to be monitored in real time.

Something I noticed on the meter display was the legend for "kVARH", or Kilo-VAR hours.

VAR means "Volt-Amperes Reactive" and is representative of the amount of energy used to maintain the magnetic field in inductive devices such as motors and transformers. The more VARs needed to power a device (or the devices in a residence), the more energy is needed to supply the load as VARs provide no useful work (useful work is measured in watts or kilowatts).

The old style rotating-disc watt-hour meters had no way of communicating with a data network, and had to be read manually. They weren't set up to read VARs (to do so, a special phase-shifting transformer would have to be added to the metering circuit), so utilities essentially had no way of knowing how much "imaginary" or "wattless" VARs were being consumed at individual residences.

Industrial and large commercial customers were different; the utility billing metering equipment was set up to read VAR-hours along with watt-hours, and impose an additional fee if the ratio of VAR-hours to watt-hours was too high (this can also referred to as "low power factor penalty billing").

What makes residential VAR metering important is that utility companies gain the ability to bill additional fees for loads that require (relatively) "large" amounts of reactive power. They can do this with a meter that can (in real-time) electronically compute "Real" power (kilowatt-hours, kWH), "Reactive" power (kilovar-hours, kVARH), and "Apparent" power (kilovolt-ampere-hours, kVAH).

Some utilities already have the ability to use PLC to command residential air conditioners to shut down during times of summertime peak energy demand.

Good stuff. Thanks!

 

[Ingomike]

Duke gave an option not to get a smart meter but charges $17 per month if you do not…

 

[Cameramonkey]

Duke gave an option not to get a smart meter but charges $17 per month if you do not…

IPL/AES didnt even give us a choice. they just swapped them.

 

[indyjohn]

Duke gave an option not to get a smart meter but charges $17 per month if you do not…

IPL/AES didnt even give us a choice. they just swapped them.

Cameramonkey speaks to the context of this thread.

 

[KokomoDave]

Duke gave an option not to get a smart meter but charges $17 per month if you do not…

Anything to make a buck. Good thing I bought a lot of their preferred stock.

My stepdad was big in saying: This is how you screw 'em with their own stock. Invest. Invest. Invest.

 

[Leadeye]

Those things will probably make it here to the Outland sometime.

 

[Lee11b]

One problem with the new Smart Electric Meters.......you're late with payment...... The person down at the power company sits down in front of their computer. Sees the accounts highlighted in RED on their screen. Looks at the amount late, and payment history.....

CLICK......your lights go out with a key stroke!!!!! as the power company person is drinking their mocha choka, never having to leave the confines of their nice, climate controlled office. I'm sure there is a hacker out there that will figure this out......their goes America's electric power!!!! and it all started with a Smart Meter.......

 

[thompal]

But with the right knowledge, if that happens you can bypass the meter.

Or with a Farraday cage, you can prevent it entirely.

 

[thompal]

VAR means "Volt-Amperes Reactive" and is representative of the amount of energy used to maintain the magnetic field in inductive devices such as motors and transformers. The more VARs needed to power a device (or the devices in a residence), the more energy is needed to supply the load as VARs provide no useful work (useful work is measured in watts or kilowatts).

Since volts x amps = watts, what is the practical difference between watts and VARs?

The only time I've encountered VAs is with battery backup supplies, which stubbornly insist on being rated in VAs while all electronic equipment only lists how much electricity it uses in the more reasonable Watt number.