I got Smart Metered Today

Shiny side OUT.

They continue to spend until they figure out how to declare bankruptcy. The courts will then do what the legislature couldn't.

I don't see a disc, just an LCD that said 000007 and then would go to all zeros and blink about six times and then it came back to 000007. Model is Flexnet 530X and it is has label that states it is part 15 compliant. Mikek

There is no fine print, some guy in a truck just changed my meter. I wasn't home. I've been had, I'm just waiting for the dire consequences! Mikek

Sorry, I didn't know you were going to read this. If I had known I would have added the obvious thing the Smart meter would do. So for carpet crawler only: " What does it mean?" other than, it can be read remotely.

BTW, my recently purchased water heater is ready to be connected to a Smart meter. Oh sorry again, if this confuses you, just stop reading. It's just possible I wanted to see what others in the group had to say about smart meters, thus my suppressed ego question. And stop trying to be a baby Phil, you're a complete failure.

Mikek

I vaguely remember working with a company in Montreal that sent data down the wire. I remember it was Montreal, because of the good French restaurants ;-) ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

The same here. Progress Energy went down the street, replacing meters. They own them, and have right of way to service their equipment. I was gone for about 45 minutes, and got home to the A/C shut down, along with my computers.

I have no idea how your work, but PG&E uses RF to a nearby pole-mounted node with twin ground planes. They report back by cellular data or in some cases, POTS.

The meters can daisy-chain; if Bob's meter can't reach the note, but can reach Carol, and hers reaches Ted, and his reaches Alice...and HERS sees the node; the data hops over....just like a Usenet feed active file.

The stupid parts:

a) Gas meters report in, too; once a day because they use a lithium battery. But they talk only to a node, not an electric meter.....WHY?

b) For those locations with no coverage, you'd think they'd put a drive-by interrogator in the reader's car.... Nope, he parks & walks.

--
A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433

They are separate companies in a lot of areas.

Not here. The truck drives through the neighborhood and logs all the meters. The driver is also supposed to look for damaged lines, and trees that need trimmed.

A "mesh" or sometimes called a "smart grid". This all depends on what the utility wants to spend.

I'm sure some are, if the same company runs them. Here, it's being done by the cable TV network, since the city owns the power company and the (new) cable company (and the water company). OTOH, they don't own any gas distribution.

They do. Perhaps they didn't spend the money on these customers.

AlwaysWrong.

There can be *dozens* of electric companies selling to the same consumer. There will only be one set of lines, however.

These guys have meters that send the info from the meter over power lines to the substation. It evidently uses SCRs that fire near zero-crossing to send data very slowly. Not sure how it receives. They are evidently noisey enough to knock grid tie inverters offline.

Patent 7,733,245

AND

On a sunny day (Sat, 07 Jul 2012 15:16:53 -0500) it happened amdx wrote in :

Usually you can specify in BIOS setup that it should restart when power comes back.

I went out and checked,

I have a smart meter, but a guy came to read it anyways, because the smart meter does not belong to the power company I buy power from... LOL 'Smart' is actually dumb, just has a wireless something, so they can drive past you place and read it, or even remotely, and see how much power you use at what time, pure espionage. In the future they will be able to switch you off remotely if: You have not payed You were not nice to them. They think you grow 'forbidden' plants (too much power). They make a mistake. Can sell the power for more elsewhere. etc etc I tried to get rid of my 'smart' meter, but the red tape was so sticky I gave up due to phone bill costs. I think that is the whole idea, that people just accept it. I have my own power meter to check if the bill is correct.

The fact they they unplugged you without prior warning shows they are a bunch of a*hole anyways. Typical US I guess. Question: Why has US still above ground wires? Any storm an lightning kill your power. Here most of not everything, except very high voltage is underground.

Here you can claim money back if power is out for longer then say X hours, food gone bad in freezer etc etc

LOL, just yesterday I wondered for moment if they were one & the same. :)

from...

I'm waiting for the authorities to show up with guns drawn anytime. I have a small business and use extra power, I get an occasional form letter from the power company that has told me I'm in 99 percentile of electric users in my area.

of a*hole anyways.

My neighbor hood does have underground electricity. However I'm at the edge of the subdivision and power arrives in the air near my house. The fuses on that pole have exploded twice in 17 years. They are loud!!

I hope that never happens I sometimes have $10,000 or $12,000 of product in my freezers. Mikek

Underground cables are expensive. They have to be trenched. They are hard to expand. They are hard to service. They have higher losses. The only advantage (aside from lightning, which is protected against with some simple passive arrestors) is the small space requirement.

Few Europeans realize just how massively spacious the US is. In the densest cities, like LA and Chicago and New York, you'll be lucky if you ever see a power line. They also use high speed trains and subways, because a millions of people need transportation within the confines of a city, just like in Europe.

The rest of the country doesn't benefit from this density.

Riddle me this: how many cities are there in the EU, with a population of

50k or less (medium-small city), that are 100km or more (in any direction) from the next city of comparable size?

In other words, over a circle of 100km radius (31k km^2 area), a population of less than 200k (assuming the next comparable-sized cities are uniformly distributed; the population due to more frequent, smaller cities may be a bit higher though), or a density of only 6.5 persons per km^2.

The map shows UK, Germany and Italy being particularly dense, in the

300-1000 range, while US is 50-75 (units #/km^2, date 2006), with density in most areas even lower, and density around the major cities comparable to European levels (the same variation is true within EU countries as well, but at a higher overall level).

Have I made my point? So next time you think of something that's different between US and EU, will you consider density? Of the most notable differences, this is why we have cars and consume so much gasoline; this is why we have overhead cables, this is how we grow so much corn, among other things, and the list goes on.

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk.
Website: http://webpages.charter.net/dawill/tmoranwms

In the UK; any given area has the so called "big 3" suppliers, and usually as many small suppliers going for a slice of the cake.

Didn't let anything happen - I contacted my supplier and they dealt with the matter with no further inconvenience to me.

Thank you for demonstrating how utterly clueless you are - please play again.

from...

past

Shiny side *out*.

Good grief, you're paranoid, Jan. It's amazing to see a paranoid socialist in action.

Not surprising. I'm sure the "authorities" are aware that your (legal) business is a power hog. Nice cover, BTW. ;-)

Of course you never make a mistake.

Good grief, you're paranoid.

of a*hole anyways.

I've seen them go but I don't remember that they were particularly loud. Maybe a different style. OTOH, I've also seen transformers blow. They *are* loud.

I hope you're insured or at least have a good backup generator. OTOH, let me know when the power goes out. I'll come down and we can throw some on the barbie. ;-)

:

from...

past

No, really!!

bunch of a*hole anyways.

The first time I heard one blow I was in the house. The second time I was watching the lineman close the switch after replacing the fuse. Uh, apparently the problem wasn't cleared, and it scared crap out of him and me. Good thing he was at the bottom of the pole and the fuse/switch was at the top. He had about a 30 ft fiberglass extension pole to close the switch.

Maybe

I have a good backup generator. Mikek