'Smart' electricity meters

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Goosey

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#725009 30-Nov-2012 08:51

old3eyes:
Damager:
Gooseybhai: power bill increases with the smart meter.....its always accurate and no bi monthly under estimates or friendly meter reader getting it wrong !

power bill doesn't really increase, it samples the electricity being used more often compared to a conventional meter. talking analoque (eg the disc type) vs smart meter.

It does actually. Since I've had a smartmeter thye power companies can now charge extra daily costs whenever the generators increase their wholesale price. With the old meter it was pretty flat over the months. Most months are pretty much the same but the price can go up or down by $30 depending what the generators charge. Mostly it goes up

NZ has had pre pay meters since the mid 90's.

richms

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#729139 9-Dec-2012 00:49

The problem I have with the "smart" meter is that I used to have 2 separate meters, easy to read thru the window in the meterbox in even dim lighting.

One for the house, one for the sheds/outdoor socket.

Then I got the smart meter. one display, cycles thru things like the total amps, volts, total kW instantaneous, and some detail of the 2 "registers"

But to get more info I have to open the meterbox and press a button on the meter. Well actually I have to open the box anyway inorder to read it because the only place it would fit positioned the meter so that the cheap small nasty LCD on it is being viewed from such an angle that there is minimal contrast. So forget being able to secure the meterbox even with screws if I want to be able to read that data in any way since I have to press and hold the button to get to some of it, and the rest is either only cycled thru on a single display that is hard read.

No electronic access to the data at all, no ability to track the 2 different readings online, I just get to see the total kWh used across both in the charts, so I still have to do manual readings to work out the split for business expense purposes.

Plenty of missing data points in the usage graphs, but the totals are always correct.

A real smart meter would do things like load shedding when I am getting over the pathetic 63A limit - which is now my total limit for both the house and the sheds since they installed the meter.

It would have some way for me to get the usage data out that didnt rely on their GSM uplink.

When they were installing the meter there were heaps of RJ11 or similar jacks under the cover that were for connecting to other useful sounding things if you google. none of those supported, all the jacks are covered so cant be accessed without opening their tamper evident and will alert them cover.

Richard rich.ms

Pock

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#729411 9-Dec-2012 20:42

Genesis were all lined up to install a smart meter at our place, but when the guy came to install hit, he said he couldn't because the gas bottle was too close.

Really don't know what difference that makes, but I guess it's in the wiring rules.

ObidiahSlope

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#729428 9-Dec-2012 21:39

Here is an example of someone doing it himself with a smart meter. Data collection only.

http://nicegear.co.nz/blog/electricity-meter-usage-over-mqtt/

Obsequious hypocrite

DarthKermit

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#732127 13-Dec-2012 16:18

Got home from work to a note saying they've installed the new meter. This is what it looks like:

Whatifthespacekeyhadneverbeeninvented?

mattwnz

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#732145 13-Dec-2012 16:39

Pock: Genesis were all lined up to install a smart meter at our place, but when the guy came to install hit, he said he couldn't because the gas bottle was too close.

Really don't know what difference that makes, but I guess it's in the wiring rules.

There are standards and codes with gas, so they are probably right. You also can't have them too close to a door.You may need to move you gas bottles if they aren't up to the relevent code/ standards.

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