Have a house electric meter (it''s not a smart meter) with the time on the clock being many hours wrong.
We use the economy 7 cheap rate tariff for the nighttime use of the washing machine.
Officially the time period for economy 7 tariff from the utility company is 12 midnight to 7am.
Would with the time being wrong on the meter clock effect the official economy 7 time period of 12 midnight to 7 in the morning ? In other words is the official time period available independent of the wrong time on the meter clock? Thanks
I don't think so. The meter records how many kWh of normal electricity consumption and how many kWh of E7, and they are what you get charged for regardless of the actual time of day or night. I think that so few people's meters are really badly out of sync with the actual time of day or night that the electricity companies simply don't care.
Just so long as you don't use your washing machine from say actual midnight to actual 3AM if the meter only records cheap rate from say
Radio Teleswitch Service planned shutdown The Radio Teleswitch Service (RTS) is an industry-run service. It's typically used to support old versions of multi-rate, or other complex meter types with certain functions via a radio signal.
The RTS signal will be shut down by the 31st of March 2024. Meters relying on the Radio Teleswitch Service could lose the ability to perform critical functions such as using off-peak timings or heating and hot water.
PS, and for the avoidance of doubt, ours was an old-style meter with two mechanical displays, one for daytime rate, the other for E7. It was linked to an electro-mechanical time clock, which controlled the switch-over of the meter from daytime rate to E7. We had it from the time we moved into the property (2000) up to about 2015, when it was all replaced by a simple and much smaller electronic system. It looked like this
You may need to post some pictures online somewhere, so the equipment can be identified.
Any time you post pictures of that sort, they should be inspected for identifying serial numbers or account numbers and those numbers blanked out with a graphics editing tool (GIMP).
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This metering version, has a radio controlled register selector, so the TOD information is transmitted on a long wave signal (getting two purposes, from the same radio transmitter). In other words, the metering is accurately done and controlled by the electric company. The meter has two "registers" or sets of digits, and the faceless box, causes the meter to put the usage count, into one register or the other (but not both).
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Since that only controls the meter, it does not control the load.
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A load could be controlled by a thermostat, such that, during the 7 hour epoch, energy is only drawn for part of that time. Just like any heater, you don't want the tank to boil. If the thermostat contacts "weld", usually tanks have a pressure release.
In addition to a thermostatic control (which would be used regardless of how the electricity is billed), you can use a timer, so the water heating only operates during the "cheap" time. It is up to the user to adjust the rotating clock knob, so it aligns with the current clock time. Failure to carry out such an adjustment (rotating part is off by some number of hours), results in a higher than normal bill.
If the wall time on a summers day was 10:10AM, then this unit pictured, has had the knob rotated to the correct position. When you pass your mouse over the product picture, the magnified image will show the time better.
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While the user manual is hard to find, it tells you that you can rotate the knob. The knob has a release clutch, that allows the wheel to be rotated with fingers. The clockwork inside does not "rotate at high speed" or anything, when you turn with fingers.
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"Adjust the clock by turning the dial clockwise."
The knob is to be turned in only *one* direction, as that's part of how the clutch works. Generally, timer knobs move in the same direction as the time-keeping. If you overshoot on the first adjustment attempt, simply keep turning in the correct direction until you get it where you want it. Not a big deal. It makes no difference, how many full rotations of the knob are used in a single adjustment session. The one in the picture is a 24 hour timer, and it has no notion of days or anything.
Once the adjustment is completed, you should get the benefit of your cheaper electricity.
On CAM-operated timers, the mechanical friction level varies as you rotate and correct the time-of-day setting on the timer. You will feel resistance and a "clunk" as you rotate. This should happen as many times as there are breaks set on the knob. The storage heater power will go On--Off--On--Off for one full rotation (in other words, as indicated by the markings on the knob). The incandescent lights, intensity level, may flicker as you rotate. Try not to rotate like a villain -- we are taught in engineering school, that rotating electromechanical control devices should be rotated slowly, so any contact capture and release processes have time to settle. Otherwise, knobs rotated at super-high-speed, a bit of metal inside could jam or rub. One of the students rotated something with a bit too much vigor, and their style got corrected.
We have an 'electronic' Economy 7 meter that has three registers for storing our electricity consumption. Only two registers are in use, one for daytime consumption and one for night-time consumption.
I'm not sure how it decides when to change from day to night and back again. It certainly doesn't look as if it can be driven by the 198kHz signal, there's no sign of an aerial or anything like that and it looks too small really to have anything that would receive LW effectively.
I have always assumed it just has an accurate 'quartz' clock in it and/or that its clock is locked to the 50Hz mains.
Is there any easy way to tell? I can post pictures of it somwhere maybe.
I have one of these meters for heating and hot water. I am aware of the switch off but EDF who are my supplier are unable to tell me what will happen next April. SSE, who are the DNO for my part of Scotland, have not said, and are being their usual unhelpful selves.
Interesting I don't think we ever had supplies with three rates... .... actually google thinks we do so I am wrong. When you say three registers are there three displays or a button to rotate round the displays?
They don't need to be big to receive long wave. The signal is strong everywhere in the UK and extends across parts of western europe. Look for the words "radio" or "teleswitch" on the meter.
Sometimes the teleswitch is a separate box
Well 50hz mains would be a problem after a power cut.
Look for the words "radio" or "teleswitch". You can up load pics to many free file sharing sites, google drive, microsoft one drive, drop box
where 'All' is the sum of Day and Night. In other words, if you're not on an E7 tariff your provider may want to know the 'All' value not the day and night readings.
(There is lots of fun to be had when having an E7 meter and not on an E7 tariff, which even seems to translate to smart meters)
I think the example in John's picture (installed 2005) just has an internal clock, no radio signalling. The quartz oscillator would keep time during a power cut, with perhaps the 50Hz as a more accurate time source when mains is up.
I would expect that if the displayed time on your meter is wrong, then the billing is also wrong.
I had an electric smart meter that was about 11 hours out (we presume it was installed by someone who set it up as 7AM UTC when it was actually 7PM BST. From talking to a mate who worked at a company that built this sort of thing, they are supposed to autosync - but we both reckoned that if it was that far out, it might be disinclined to autocorrect.
I got access to my DCC data via n3rgy.com (which was how I noticed the problem in the first place, I was monitoring my energy usage) and found that the billing data was following the clock on the meter (what else could it do?). It took me three rounds of complaining about this to get the meter fixed, since they had to send a person round to do this, and obviously didn't want to.
It's got nothing to do with the DNO, it's the energy supplier that is responsible for everything downstream of the 80/100A supply fuse.
My mother has a dual electrical phase, radio teleswitch installed system. I've been battling with her energy supplier (who are SSE Retail) over a replacement for a year now. SSE Retail were bought by OVO a couple of years ago. She requires a 'Polyphase Smart Meter/Switch'. SSE tell me (just this week), that installs are running behind schedule, and in any case my mother can't apply for one until she is migrated to an OVO account. Every SSE Retail customer is set to be migrated before Oct
31 this year.
SSE Retail are appallingly bad. Even claimed initially it was a DNO matter (confusingly who are SSE in this part of the world). I had a long chat with SSE the DNO, they said the retail arm often tries to dump this sort of issue with them, to get rid of enquires.
198KHz might be suited to a ferrite core and a small coil. A cap would be placed across the coil, and the assembly custom tuned to 198KHz. You want it to be resonant. (AM Radios with ferrite antenna, seem to run fine without a wire running across the floor.)
198KHz should be able to penetrate a building.
DCF77 (77KHz receiver board) looks like this. These can be used to calibrate automatically, some wall clocks.
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Conversely, the power needed to run such facilities (the transmitter), is pretty significant. Enough to make the provider of it, whine about the power bills :-) The power level of this transmitter, was selected for its main purpose, not for the secondary purpose of facilitating Economy 7. Which means the transmitter power may be more than is needed for the job. This means there will be a very fat signal at 198Khz.
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"The power supply for the station was provided by 4 large diesel generators situated in an engine room at the rear of the building"
"to run the station with a normal load of 1000 kilowatts"
Now, that's a seriously large power bill. But at that power level, the receiver design is going to work. I bet DCF77 doesn't use that much power for its transmitter (Wiki says 50kW ballpark).
And that transmitter has two purposes, both of which will end at the same time, when the transmitter is shut down. They don't have enough replacement valves to run it forever.
There's a picture of a valve here. The filament current is 375 amps!
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