Self reporting KwH meter

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sundowner

sundowner

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West Wisconsin
Recently moved to the western part of Wisconsin and am now on a rural electric Coop for my power. I noticed that the meter on the side of the house is the kind which has electronics in it and reports the Kwh's automatically. I am wondering what the basic operation is. How does this animal work. I also noticed something new, my new pedestal has a by pass switch in it, integral with the meter socket. If I wanted to remove the meter I would need to actuate the switch to push the meter out, bypassing the meter, but still keeping the service energized. Is this a new 05 reg which I am not aware of, or just a Coop thing ???

Thanks in advance guys !!!

Steve
 
The bypass is a power company rule.

The meter is called an AMR meter, and it sends a radio signal of sorts over the line. It will also tattle on you if you yank it and put it back in later!!
 
LawnGuyLandSparky said:
How would the meter know it was yanked, as opposed to a simple area outage?
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Okay, the meter will report an outage at your house. :)

Seriously, the remote-reading meters contain a transmitter that sends a signal either over the line (PLC), as Marc said, or via radio to POCO vehicles with scanning receivers.

However, it wouldn't be difficult to provide the electronics with a battery or super-cap and a non-volatile memory and a sensor to show that the load was also removed.

"But, flipping the main breaker would look the same to the meter."

Okay, yes, you're right. How about a mercury tilt switch?

"What about earthquakes?!" "Environmental issues with mercury!"

All right, all ready! There's a tamper switch button that sticks out of the back of the meter and senses it being pulled. How's that?

I really don't know. :grin: But, it's not the kind of question I'd ask over the phone from home. (caller ID)
 
Some network devices include a "heartbeat", which is a signal that is sent periodically to indicate that it's still alive. That's one way it could be done. If the POCO knew your meter wasn't reporting, and everyone else around you was, well, that would be a bad thing.

My employer is working with other companies on "smart meters" that have the ability to, uh, turn off your power, in the event the grid load needs to be reduced. Or to report how much you're using at any given point in time for capacity planning. Not sure how much this has been turned into practice, but people are looking at offering discounts if you're willing to have your power turned off for short periods of time during periods of high load. We were threatened with rolling blackouts last summer, and many businesses here in town asked their employees to telecommute to save power in office buildings. Not sure what good that would actually due since I don't run my AC that much in the summer when I'm away from the house, but I run the heck out of it when it's 105F and I'm home ...
 
Thanks guys and Gals (Tallgirl)


I was just wondering about it since it was new to me. I knew I'd get a quick answer.

The site really is a great resource.

Good day all

Steve
 
The meter will "report in" when it's put back into the socket. If that restoration of power doesn't jive with an outage in your area, you're busted. Same way with demand meters, if you reset the demand counter when you're not supposed to.
 
tallgirl said:
My employer is working with other companies on "smart meters" that have the ability to, uh, turn off your power, in the event the grid load needs to be reduced. ... but people are looking at offering discounts if you're willing to have your power turned off for short periods of time during periods of high load.
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It works, we've been doing it here in NZ since the 1920s. Your average domestic panel has up to three feeds from the meter box, for normal, night only loads (eg storage heaters), and interruptible. By having your hot water heating on interruptible power, you get a few percent off all your power costs. With an adequate sized tank you never notice it. One mouse click and thousands of loads get dropped :)
 
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