Wind turbines used to absorb a power surplus?

[Rod Speed]

Yeah, I have two dozen. Bet there are millions in the UK.

[Rod Speed]

alan_m [e-mail]> wrote

Our meter boxes are all on an outside wall of the house.

Same here, peak and off peak meter.

Same here.

They never say anything to the house occupant here unless there is what looks like a dog that might bite them in the backyard. Since I have 3 massive great 8'x8' patio doors between where I sit and where he walks from the back gate to the meter box half way up the 100' long N wall, I normall can hear him open the 4'x4' metal door with a horizontal hinge on the top edge and might get a wave as he leaves when he can see me looking at him leaving.

[Cindy Hamilton]

I've never had an indoor electric or gas meter. Water meters are indoors to prevent freezing, but now they have a transmitter (or something) wired from the indoor meter to the outside of the house. Unless they've become even fancier, a truck drives down the street and reads the signal from each water meter.

[Ed Pawlowski]

When I lived in Philadelphia, indoor meters were the norm. There was a time that mom was home so not a big deal. They would also leave a card with the meter dials printed and you filled out the position and mailed it.

There are a lot of stores from meter readers too. Some houses had coal stoves and people burned all sort of stuff, such as every other step going to the basement. They also got to know the exhibitionists on the route too.

My electric meter here is read daily. I can go on line or my phone and see current charges and projected bill at any time.

[Sylvia Else]

I don't know what the technical issue is, but here in Australia, it's not especially unusual for the spot electricity price to go negative at night when coal plants don't want to reduce their output. If they had another solution that didn't involve spending money, I'm sure they'd use it.

Sylvia.

[alan_m]

In which country is this once a month appearance by a meter reader?

Here in the the UK in 40 years of house ownership I've only had the meter readers enter my property around 20 times. The water meter is outside and read around twice a year (water and sewage bills are every 6 months but paid monthly by direct debit straight from my bank account). I also pay for my electricity and gas by a monthly direct debit.

I was making the comparison about 15 minutes to fit a smart meter which didn't include any allowance for travelling or picking the meter up from a depot. It's a like for like comparison about the meter reader only taking 30 seconds from entering my property to leaving it having read both the electricity and gas meters.

[alan_m]

Only if the power company haven't overestimated the usage for when they take the monthly DD.

From the defunct Bulb Energy FAQ

Morrison Data Services carry out meter readings for us.

Meter readers are required to visit everyone's property at least once every 2 years to make sure everything's safe and ticking over properly.

[Rod Speed]

He's a yank. So is Bowman and Cindy.

The difference is that the meter reader goes down the street reading meters. Meter installers don't.

[micky]

When my parents got married, my father bought a stoker, a hopper with a worm gear, so that my mother (well, I didn't exist so they weren't parents yet.) so my mother wouldnt' have to shovel coal all day long. He'd fill it up in the morning. But he was 53 and it didn't take long before he didn't like filling up the stoker and they put in a gas furnace.

That's good.

[micky]

The USA.

At the start of the day they load 35 meters into his truck, and give him a list of houses close together, maybe right next to each other. They plan to do all the houses asap so going one by one down the street is the simplest way. (If they only do some, then the meter reader still has to go there for the few houses that are left, and that itself is inefficient.)

It take a minute to cut the lead-sealed metal strip that holds on the old meter, a minute to take off the 10" metal ring that holds the meter to the base, a minute to pull the meter (10 seconds, really), 2 minutes to take a new meter out of its box, remove the plastic covers to the 3 big tabs, and insert the meter into the base, a minute to replace the ring, and a minute to attach a new lead band. That's 7 minutes.

Then a minute to enter the meter number (of the new meter) and the new lead band number into the log, a minute to put the old meter into the box the new meter came in, and 4 minutes to pick up the old meter and walk back to the truck. That's 13 minutes.

Now, to get to the next address -- maybe it's next door -- and take another meter from the back of the truck.

My estimate is realistic. I started with an hour until I remembered how simple it is, that it's not necessary to cut the power to the house and no wiring is required. It unplugs and plugs back in. I myself have pulled a meter, removed the plastic covers from the tabs, and replaced it. Took literally two minutes.

[Carlos E.R.]

Different thing.

[Sylvia Else]

Though of course, the end user never sees a cent of this.

Sylvia.

[alan_m]

My electric smart meter was installed with new tails and an isolation switch. On the same visit a smart gas meter was installed with the necessary purging and gas pressure/leak safety checks and the additional checks to ensure all gas appliances were working satisfactory afterwards.

In the UK it does not plug in and in my case the suppliers fuse was pulled to cut the supply.

[Rod Speed]

That's the spot price, not the retail price.

[Rod Speed]

Nothing like that here, but its almost as easy to change the physical meter.

We have two, one each for peak and off peak electricity.

[alan_m]

In the UK there is a mix, around my way outside for most newer properties or often when houses have been converted to flats. Along my road most houses have their electricity and gas meter inside the house with no external meter box.

Smart meters are not compulsory and many people have refused the offer to have them fitted. There has been quite a lot of adverse publicity recently surrounding smart meters. With energy prices doubling many hundreds of thousands are struggling paying for their energy. The energy companies have been programming smart meters to become pre-payment meters overnight for these people. This is not just more inconvenient but a more expensive way of pay for energy - although the price difference compared to us who pay by direct debit will end in July this year.

There is also a mix of metered and un-metered water. In general, new builds require a water meter but for older properties the owner can request one which remains in place for subsequent owners. Again generalising, if the number of people occupying the property is less than the number of bedrooms in the property there is likely to be a large saving in water and sewage charges based on the meter reading so for many there is an incentive to request a water meter.

[rbowman]

My electric bill varies monthly and there's a graphic of my consumption versus the same month in the prior year. I never gave it thought but it's some sort of remote reading. There are no little footprints in the snow leading up to the meter.

I doubt they are using power-line communication so there must be someone driving around to collect the data.

[Ed Pawlowski]

In CT a car drove up the street and read the meters. Electric monthly, water quarterly. Here, it transmits to a spot in the community that has a power supply and a couple of antenna. Electric use is transmitted daily.

[rbowman]

I have some but it's because the electric company sent out LED replacements before the original batch of CFSs burned out.

[Rod Speed]

Mine was metered but the council, the operation who supplys our water didnt bother to read the meters essentially because the cost of the meter readers wasnt warranted. But then the state govt forced them to read the meters, essentially to discourage wasting water.