Is it possible to fool a mains voltage watt-meter into measuring less power than it is being consumed? ie could you add a signal of some sort to the mains to slow down an energy meter or fool a watt-meter?
Hardy
Don't want to pay for your electricity huh?
Dave.
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Absolutely. Just add a negative resistance load to balance out the positive resistance loads. This is just like adding capacitors to raise a lagging power factor.
Tim
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It is simple/ Those meters have a volatge and a current coil. Reverse the connection on one of those, and it will run backward.
I have a few 10 amp tunnel diodes here, maybe you can use these?
I think you could circulate a lot of DC in the loop and slow down the rotor through eddy-current damping. It wouldn't take much real power to do that. I haven't tried it, though, because it would be cheating.
John
If it's a rotor type, I wonder if a really strong permanent magnet would do it ?
Graham
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I suppose at some high field strength you could saturate the core of a CT unless it's something like a Rogowski coil.
Best regards, Spehro Pefhany
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If that's true, wouldn't a rectified load do the same thing? Seems to be a good way to get some free heat.
It probably will slow down a bit into a rectified load. I've always wanted to try it but never got around to it.
But I was thinking about a *lot* of circulating DC!
John
Houses with resistive heat have a *lot* of circulating AC. A bit of a diode takes care of that. ;-)
Turn off your lights, computer & TV, then read a book out under a shade tree.
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Just turning his computer off would solve the problem from my perspective.
That was the whole idea. :)
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No - you have to drill a big hole in the wall to the conduit _before_ the meter, and then just tap into the big wires and steal as much power as you want to, until you get caught.
Good Luck! Rich
not in a way that's not easily detected.
anyone claiming such is probably lying.
sounds kind of exciting. how do you keep the DC out of your appliances?
should do, they already have one perminant magnet in there doing exactly that
wouldn't that blow the supply fuses?
You can slow down the electromechanical watthour meters by having a net DC current flow through them. The effect isn't very large so it isn't going to be worth the risks involved.
I think it is very unlikely that the electronic ones can be fooled in the same way.
Both sorts of power meters don't do very well if you draw your power in very short pulses. They don't see frequencies above 10KHz very well. The down side of this method is that your radios and TVs would likely buzz as would the ones next door. Someone in a uniform is likely to come by to ask you to kindly stop doing that.
Well, don't do that.
I have no idea how much rotor slowdown you'd get from, say, 30 amps of DC. I also have no idea how much income I'd lose from, say, 6 months in prison.
John
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