These Really suck and they have installed them where I am. They never told anybody what the hell they could do with these. However I am a little confused that they can actually determine what appliance is drawing the power. I can see they will see the power usage but lets say I am running to 1000w lights drawing power. Outside I am running 12 horse tank heaters in the winter at 20 amps a piece. How in the hell are they going to know what is drawing all the power. looking online I see they are throwing fits all over as these meters are giving off radiation and several people are raising hell about it. t6
The only reason they know what appliance is running and using power is if that appliance is smart grid compatible. There are very few on the market now, but there are some, fridges, stoves, and the like. Unless your appliance has a micro chip, it is no different from the past. Edit: And by micro chip I mean beyond the one meant to control the basic functions of the device. It is a special technology standard (two of them) that would allow the system to monitor individual devices.
Well thats a relief. Jesus that would be cute if they could actually tell you were running mh lights and pop you because of it. t6
We have a "smart meter" here. And yes, unless the appliance is smart meter compatible, it just saves the electric company the cost of a human meter reader coming by. BBT
So I'm buying a new house soon, and although I understand that they, for the most part, can't tell what is pulling how much, other than my grow, I am an electricity miser. ie, you would definitely notice that at (for example) 7 am there was a big spike and 7 pm it went away. what if my new house already has one? wouldn't that be a tad suspicious if i asked them to put an old one back in? GTWT :XXhippylove:
As was said, unless an appliance is smart grid compatible, all that the power company sees is the same thing they would see with an old meter. They could see the same (insignificant) spike with the old meters as they would with the new ones. The point of the smart grid technology is to eventually be able to do things like control the power to your fridge or computer at times when it doesn't need to be running, or allowing you to control your devices remotely. I am not even sure they actually can differentiate between specific appliances either, yet. Rather one that is smart compatible would relate its minimum and maximum electricity needs and the grid would regulate it accordingly, thus distributing the power more efficiently, in theory. Smart grid and meter technology has no effect on what we do.
The Reason.... I have lived in a city that refuses to fully integrate these things but all in all I think that it could be viewed as a good thing or a bad thing depending on who you are in the equation. If you are a power consumer and assuming that lowering average total cost of providing utility service per consumer would encourage the power company to lower the price that it charges consumers (you and I) then it would be a good thing. The way that the power company would save money would be to reduce its workforce to the personnel necessary to read the utility meters from a distance instead of one by one or estimation. This would also theoretically put an end to inaccurate utility bills because it would no longer be more convinient to just guestimate and read the meters by sight 3 or 4 times a year, which is standard operating procedure for most power companies. It would add to the unemployment rate in the short-run but we would pay lower and more accurate utility bills in the long-run. I doubt that they could really tell what exactly is on the other end of a power line drawing power and to be honest why would they want to? As long as you pay your bills on time they could care less about trying to guess whether anyone is running growlights. I just don't think that it's in their economic interest to be working with LEO's to try and get you raided.
You don't have to run 'smart' appliances for LEO to see your power spikes 12 hours at the same time each day. That's a dead giveaway for indoor gardening. The book I got with my new smart meter says they record your power usage every second of the day so they can send a detailed statement to the customer.
outsmart the power spikes Example I run 1000 watt light in my vegroom and my flower room and both of them are on a 12 hour schedule when 1 shuts off the other comes on. in my vegroom I run some compact fluorescents to keep everything from flowering and from 2-6 pm I have nothing on except the floros. The two rooms do overlap with the HIDs.but its for 4 hours. I even turn the ac off Believe it or not with to air conditioners and 5000 watts shutting everything down during peak hours literally cut my bill in half. that's good old pg&e for ya
My cousin the DEA agent He actually told me that with the new smart meters they can read this digital frequency signature of your electronic ballast and LED lights. The traditional magnetic ballast just look like an electric motor Turning on And running.
Bullshit. The phrase "digital frequency signature" doesn't even mean anything. Just because something is plugged in doesn't mean it sends a digital signature. A digital ballasts wouldn't have a digital signature because it is not meant to send or receive information to or from a network or computer, and therefor wouldn't have a microchip to do so, or other appropriate hardware. All these smart meters are going to do is make it easier for power companies to record total power usage of a home.
Just about all markets for major utilities in the U.S. are monopolies that the government allows because when it comes to providing power to a large amount of customers it's cheaper and more effecient to society to outlaw competition, but it is heavily regulated by government to make sure that these monopolies don't just charge whatever they choose. So your local power company is already living with the reality that they are not making nearly as much as they could without government regulation. I don't think that they would conspire with LEO to help put some of the biggest buyers of their good (energy) in prison where they are not spending money on their product. I think that unless they had a warrant already they would tell the police to go fuck themselves if the cops came to them for information unless they told them that the person was a terrorist or something trying to build a bomb at his house or something.
