"RBM" wrote in news:4de064ae$0$7953$ snipped-for-privacy@cv.net:
since the white return wire returns the current from all 3 phases,wouldn't that give you the sum of all the currents? Perhaps a more accurate measurement of total power than the other way.
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It would seem to me that if the one white return wire returned the current from all 3 phases it would have to be one hell of a conductor.
No, the neutral only carries the imbalanced load, which is why it is allowed to be smaller than the ungrounded legs
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no the white wire returns only the UNBALANCED current
I agree the OP should gain access to the real meter so he can read the meter say once a day and find out what is going on.
Mark
Do you know what a demand meter is? Typically commercial meters register peak demand and that peak demand figure is used as a multiplier
Only the *difference* of the three phases is returned in the neutral. With a balanced load there will be zero current in the neutral.
I have no idea. I would think that most utility companies try to communicate as infrequently and as minimally as possible with their customers.
We bought this building 6 years ago. What-ever meter it had is what-ever meter it had. When we wanted the lights to come on, we placed a call to the local utility and at some point soon after the lights came on.
They don't seem to be in the habbit of sending a welcome basket along with a nice, comprehensive information package telling us what choices of meters and electrical service we have, nor a copy of the NIST-traceable certification for the meter.
Never heard of it.
What would be the criteria for determining when a "demand meter" is installed in a given premises, vs a non "demand-meter" ?
Does a "demand meter" give a more accurate measure of energy consumption?
On 5/28/2011 9:26 PM, Home Guy wrote: ...
It's the tariff schedule. Call the business office or look at the bill; it'll tell you what your rate(s) are.
It's not unusual as others have said for commercial to be on such a tariff but it's more generally so for manufacturing than simply office but it'll all depend on where you are.
As somebody else has noted, there will be very specific rules in the state in which you're located regarding what the utility is required to do regarding a question regarding billing. Look at that information that is bound to be available from your state rate commission or whatever the equivalent is called where you are.
Messing around as you're doing isn't going to get you anywhere at all useful.
Have you evn verified that the meter is actually physically read on a monthly basis rather than estimated and the balloon "reading" isn't simply the annual catchup when they finally do read it? As mentioned before that would certainly be one possible explanation.
@Home Guy:
A "demand meter" comes into play as a factor when:
-- The size of the electrical service is exceeds a certain predetermined size...
-- The property is zoned commercial/industrial usually will have a demand meter unless you are a small tenant with a separate meter and your electrical service capacity is smaller than the predetermined size mentioned above...
A "demand meter" is no more or less accurate than the meter you have installed on your house -- it is simply keeping track of an additional aspect to your power use, rather than only being an odometer counting how many kWh of energy you are using in a month, it is also keeping track of what your greatest simultaneous draw of energy (a.k.a. your "peak demand") was during the billing period which like others have said acts as a multiplier or determines which billing rate you will be charged for your electric bill for that month...
With a "demand meter" service, a business which uses a consistent 20KW of electrical energy during a billing period would pay a different rate than a customer who uses 100KW of electrical energy in short bursts even if the overall consumption of kWh during said billing period was identical...
~~ Evan
Not at all. If you walked into a room and presented your "novel" ideas to folks who have a clue and understand what could be done and why your ideas make very little practical sense they would respond in the same fashion asking "why" in order to discover if there was something you didn't convey or to offer a better idea.
See above.
Investigating is good. The method you're using is the rock to nowhere. Get a tool that can do the job...and he works for the power company.
Yes, I am. If you have a bunch of CFL lights and nothing else running, your aggregate PF can be 0.6. During the day, when the lights are off and motors are running, it might be 0.6 in the other direction. The power meter only cares about what's happening NOW. There's a lot of legislation in place or on the way to make NEW stuff do internal power factor correction. But it's gonna take a while to make a difference. Power factor is a mythical number that assumes that voltage and current are both perfect sine waves that are out of phase. Take a look at the load from your computer. You might find that it's a bunch of narrow spikes that bear no resemblance to sine waves. A "kill a watt" meter will give you a power factor number, but the crest factor may be WAY bigger than 1.
The only number that makes ANY difference is the one after the $ on your bill.
Quit messing around and get the power company out to look at it. Show them the evidence you're bitching about here. Only they can do anything about it.
What's on the paper is inconsequential until you get into a court of law. Fret over that when it happens. CALL THE POWER COMPANY...you don't appear to have the skills or equipment to make a challenge.
It's my assertion that GETTING THE POWER COMPANY TO INVESTIGATE is the first step. The second step is to call whatever agency regulates the power company. Attempting to measure it yourself is way down the list. You ain't got the equipment to prove 'em wrong.
The neutral only returns unbalanced current.
Here's a question no one has asked. Why is the meter in a box that is locked? I've never seen this before. Do you know if similar meters are all locked? Why not ask the electric company to leave the box unlocked? That way at least you could see what the actual meter is doing.
(I note that no explicit answer is given for that question)
So are you saying that customers with "demand meters" are billed on the basis of their peak demand - a reading based on only a few minutes worth of energy usage as seen over an entire billing period?
How is that a fair or equitable way to bill a customer?
Are commercial customers that typically use between 2000 and 3000 kwh of electricity per month normally considered as candidates for a demand meter, or are they used for much higher usage customers?
That question was posed earlier in this thread, and I speculated as to the reason for a locked cabinet in a post I made on Friday night (8:47 pm est):
============ The meter is in a locked cabinet. The only time I get to see it is when the meter-reader guy comes around once a month to read it.
I suspect the meter is in a locked cabinet to prevent tampering / bypass (the meter is inside the utility / furnace room of the building and is not accessible from the outside). ==========
Based on the following (and others which I'm not including) I don't think it's uncommon for billing meters to be located in locked cabinets, or "cupboards" (a term used in the UK):
====================
See also:
==================
And this:
=================
Our electricity meters are all together in a locked metal cabinet near the street. These connect with underground wiring to a breaker box in each house's garage. ==================
And this:
===============
No. It's immaterial to the usage; only determines what the appropriate rate will be. Again, that only will matter if you're actually on a demand-based billing (which, personally, I would doubt for a small office-type complex, but wouldn't be impossible).
...
Yes
What's "fair" got to do with it? :)
It's owing to the fact that as another already posted, facilities have to be provided by the utility to handle the peak load; that costs more so they bill more. It's also an incentive to the customer to look at load-leveling techniques aggressively to cut their costs.
Generally, much higher.
All you'll have to do is look at your bill and you'll know what the tariff schedule is.
Again, you're looking in the wrong place here, first.
In all likelihood, the "problem" is _NOT_ in the metering but in either having an unknown or parasitic load, the "reading" not being actual reading but estimated until the "catch up" real reading at the beginning of the year or other explainable issue. The likelihood of your meter being in error is quite low for the explanation of the usage data you previously posted.
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The accuracy is the same range as any other meter.
There is some confusion here. Power factor then is the ratio of active power to total power. Power factor comes into play, mostly when you have a lot of large motors. Yes, you set the reading during startup with the inefficient motors. You can correct this by using a bank of capacitors properly sized. Or with a capacitor at each of the large users, such as a 150 HP air compressor.
I don't claim to understand it all, but I do know it exists.
Questionable, but done all the time.
On 5/29/2011 9:23 AM, Ed Pawlowski wrote: ...
What's there to question about it?
As noted, the utility must supply the facilities and generation capacity to satisfy peak demand, not average. That costs and the use of demand-based tariffs provides a strong incentive to the end user to be aggressive in implementing load-leveling techniques to the end benefit of both utility and themselves.
--
No. As others have said, the peak determines the rate used. For example, if your peak is below 5 KW, then you might be billed at 12 cents per KWH. If your peak goes above 5 KW, you might be billed at
15 cents per KWH. Those are just made up numbers. Your rates at various peaks will be different. In summary, your peak is based on just a few seconds, but you bill is still based on actual usage.Hmmm, BOTTOM LINE>>>>every single dime. Sounds like OP is Scrooge, will be only happy when he gets free power. His building may be 100 years old containing industrial revolution era stuffs. Proper course of action would cost $$$ which is not in his book. My take on this thread.
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