Smart gas meters on their way.

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#3044402 3-Mar-2023 19:03

SomeoneSomewhere:

Most electrical smart meters and I imagine these gas meters cannot disconnect power.

Why would you want that in a meter though? The whole point of a meter is just to measure whatever amount of stuff is going through it. If you want extra capability (such as disconnection), then you opt for that as optional extras.

Bung

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#3044405 3-Mar-2023 19:24

SomeoneSomewhere:
Most electrical smart meters and I imagine these gas meters cannot disconnect power. Disconnection requires high-current relays (or a valve), which bump up costs significantly and make the safety and reliability tests a fair bit more difficult.

Our meter from Vector is an EDMI Atlas Mk7A. This would probably be fairly common.

"Built on the advanced Atlas metering platform, the Mk7A is a single phase 2-element meter which integrates both a 100A UC3 compliant relay and 40A UC2 compliant load control relay which allows disconnection and reconnection of electrical services remotely."

SomeoneSomewhere

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#3044439 3-Mar-2023 21:48

The EDMI power meters can have a relay fitted as an optional extra. Most don't have it; just shunts. I wouldn't be surprised if the gas meters are the same.

As for why you'd want it? If you want to disconnect a customer remotely, your meter already has a network connection, suitable logic, and is tamper-evident sealed. Cheaper to have it all in one box. Cheaper still to ignore the relay and threaten the customer into paying. I believe it is/was only the prepay plans or serial non-payers that ended up with the relay.

PolicyGuy

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#3044440 3-Mar-2023 21:49

Disconnecting gas and electricity are completely different activities.

You can disconnect and reconnect electricity any time you like, there's normally very little downstream consequence (unless the occupant has a medical need, of course).

As was discussed at the top of this thread, if you disconnect gas (in this case to swap the meter), then the reconnection process must be attended by a suitably skilled & licensed technician, who is there to make sure all the pilot lights are lit, there is no air entrained in the lines and so on.
So I'd be extremely surprised if a gas meter installed in NZ had a remote disconnect feature.

TechnoGuy001

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#3214723 5-Apr-2024 16:57

We just got our smart meter installed. Anyone know where (and when) the more up to date meter reading data is with Genesis?

Should I expect it to pop up here? (currently just monthly + estimate shown here)

https://myaccount.genesisenergy.co.nz/account/products/natural-gas

mattwnz

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#3214732 5-Apr-2024 17:13

Glad I have got gas bottles instead. To have a gas line connection has a high daily charge and this sort of thing potentially adds to the costs of running the fixed line network. Whereas I only use gas for instant hot water, so don't use much.

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davidcole

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#3214764 5-Apr-2024 18:17

TechnoGuy001:
We just got our smart meter installed. Anyone know where (and when) the more up to date meter reading data is with Genesis?

Should I expect it to pop up here? (currently just monthly + estimate shown here)

https://myaccount.genesisenergy.co.nz/account/products/natural-gas

It should show up. Normally it’s 48 hours behind.

Which is why for power, I monitor my own with home assistant. And in the old days used to pull it from genesis into a db at home so I could cross reference it with stuff.

Don’t bother asking genesis for api access, they just expect you to downlod to csv manually like it’s 1983

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TechnoGuy001

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#3214958 6-Apr-2024 08:48

Yay, looks like it's up and running today! Did take about 48h before it changed.

Interesting to see our hourly gas usage.

Would be cool if we could link it with home assistant, can't believe that used to be possible. I don't know what crazy person is downloading the CSV.

I guess you can script something to login, and download the CSV.

Edit:

Anyone know what the 0.08c /h is from? Is that our daily charge, in hourly form? (seem's on the high end looking at past bills)

Seeing how it shows 0.00kWh used.

SomeoneSomewhere

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#3214964 6-Apr-2024 09:47

$2/day is common for a high-user daily charge I think? That's what 8c/hour works out to.

TechnoGuy001

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#3214968 6-Apr-2024 10:00

Our last bill had our day cost at $1.65 ($44.44 for 27 days), so $0.069 per hour. Maybe they're just excessively rounding up.

Didn't think we were high users of gas.

Edit, maybe the chart shows prices inc GST, where as the receipt looks to be ex GST. Either way, daily gas charge is crazy.

We pay more for the daily charge then what we actually used. 🙃

mkissin

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#3214977 6-Apr-2024 10:55

Yep, which is why gas only really makes sense if you’re using it for heating. A gas hob and hot water isn’t high enough use to warrant the fixed charges. I’d love to get rid of ours, but the upfront costs are significant so I’ll tie it in with another reno job at some point.

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SomeoneSomewhere

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#3215322 7-Apr-2024 17:13

You might be able to switch to a low-user plan, similar to low-user and normal power plan. You'll have a higher price per unit.

The cost to maintain a physical utility connection to a property is often a large portion of the overall cost. Previous suggestions about e.g. electricity being 'too cheap to meter' have aged poorly, but with unlimited broadband plans now being the norm, internet connections have achieved that.

TechnoGuy001

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#3215326 7-Apr-2024 17:31

Thanks for the heads up, didn't realise gas had a low user option too. Doing some quick math, looks like it's the way to go for us.

MurrayM

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#3215706 8-Apr-2024 15:31

SomeoneSomewhere: You might be able to switch to a low-user plan, similar to low-user and normal power plan. You'll have a higher price per unit.

Are low-user mains gas plans available throughout NZ? I'm with Frank Energy and I live in Auckland and their pricing website page mentions low user electricity plans but not for gas.

I did a quick Google but I couldn't find any mains gas providers mentioning a low-user option.

TechnoGuy001

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#3215707 8-Apr-2024 15:35

Genesis has it. Scroll way down to "Low Energy User profile"

https://www.genesisenergy.co.nz/for-home/products/explore-pricing/natural-gas

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