OMG that article is mess of wrong and (some) right. Sheesh!
Wikipedia reminds me how the old meters work: they are sensitive only to
actual power delivered, ignoring the inductive and capacitive parts of
the loads. They have a number of areas where errors can occur but so
also do the new meters. Neither is particularly biased to give higher
vs lower power readings when they go in error.
For commercial heavy power users power companies can/do charge more for
bad power factor, because high out-of-phase current, while not
delivering power, still heats up the transmission lines, wasting power.
This is not of concern here, for home users.
The surge currents caused by incandescent lamps, DC supplies with huge
capacitors, and stalled motors, is easily followed by the old meters. Go
watch your meter while running through a wash load. Or when the fridge
starts.
The inertia of the disc, if it had any effect at all, would go both
ways, skidding when the current stops as much as it lags when it starts.
Heating elements do NOT have a turn-on surge of any significance, since
they use nichrome, not tungsten.
The heart of his analysis is that fast changing loads are poorly
recorded by the old meters and thus gave you a break on your bill.
Bull. Their time-domain information may be quite restricted, but the
area under the curve remains the same. Just a simple filter.
I smell a hatchet job.
ps: "health concerns", "prodigious rf emitted". The rf power involved
is way way lower that the field from a close power line. Relax.
Ol' Bab, who was an engineer
On 12/10/2012 1:40 PM, Harvey Norris wrote:
--- On Mon, 12/10/12, Terry Blanton <[email protected]> wrote:
From: Terry Blanton <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Vo]:Why Smart Meters Produce Higher Bills
To: [email protected]
Date: Monday, December 10, 2012, 7:47 AM
Certainly, improved response time
would increase the accuracy of the
actual power measured. I wonder if the smart meters
are also
measuring total power instead of only real power (kVA
instead of kW)?
If so, this would also increase the bill.
Good article, I have always wondered about this. First and foremost however is the very
real issue of health concerns due to prodiguous rf issued by these devices. I lost all my
bookmarks due to my motherboard crashing on my old computer, but San Francisco Tesla
Society had a speaker on the subject who compared the effects to living near a high
voltage line tower. If Karl sends it to me I will forward to vortex list. It would appear
to me that that the old style meters are simply recording the amount of amperage being
consumed, and take no measures to actually bill the customer for the "real"
power being consumed.(amperage and voltage waveforms being out of phase on reactive loads
means that the real power will be the cos of their phase angle difference) The old style
meters then are just recording the apparent power which is the instantaneous amperage
times the supply voltage, which does not significantly change during load
applications.HOWEVER, I think
that maybe someone told me that this was incorrect, that the old style meters
DO incorporate a power factor correction in their billing. So that issue is up
in the air for now. The explanation of the eddy current issue on the aluminum
disc of the old style meters seems confusing at first as it might leave you
thinking that if the amperage is constant, no eddy currents on the aluminum
disc would exist. That would certainly be true for DC currents only, but since
we are consuming AC currents, those eddy currents would also be continuously
generated due to a continually changing magnetic field.
The inertia issue of the aluminum disc also seems appropriate. If the smart
meter corrects for power factor I cant see why the bills are higher.
On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 3:30 AM, Axil Axil <[email protected]>
wrote:
http://rense.com/general94/meters.htm
True?
