5 ms·
I noticed my electric bill went up a bit when I was moved over to the electronic meter ... not so much that I thought anything of it other than that gee, I use
by mdip 10y ago
I noticed my electric bill went up a bit when I was moved over to the electronic meter ... not so much that I thought anything of it other than that gee, I use a lot of power and now it seems like I'm using a little more.
The problem here is that the discrepancy is in the favor of the power company. As long as they're making more money and especially because the "Accredited Testing Agency"'s own tests won't detect the fault, it's unlikely anything will be done about it unless there's an obscene amount of media attention paid to it and the regulators step in requiring a correction.
... Though there is one way that might happen more quickly. I wonder if there's a converse effect? Are there methods for consuming electricity on these meters that they similarly fail with but woefully under report the amount of electricity being used? If something like that was discovered and publicized enough for people to take advantage of it, I'd imagine the problem would get fixed on the short order. I'm pretty weak on electrical engineering, so I'm really thinking of this from the perspective of "Hey, that same flaw that allows an attacker to exploit my phone also allows me to gain root and unlock it!"
- Spooky23 10y agoResearch the meter first. I thought the same thing about my gas usage -- turns out the meter was actually running slow.
- tomsaffell 10y ago> I wonder if there's a converse effect? If the inaccuracies are due to the meter's assumption around the current waveform then there probably is a way to exploit that. I suspect (from the little I have read) that the meters in question are: 1) assuming a sinusoidal current wave form, 2) assuming that the peak observed current is the peak of that sinusoidal wave, 3) effectively integrating under the area of the curve (with respect to voltage) to estimate total power. If all that's true, then to 'cheat' you'd need a device for which the current waveform looks like a 'fat' sine wave - same peak height, but wider peaks and steeper gradient through zero. In the extreme case it would be a square wave, but that might have too much harmonics. For example, you could create a heater (a simple resistive load) that alters its resistance at 60hz. When the voltage reaches its peak the heater would have its 'normal' resistance, and during the next 1/4 cycle it would ramp down its resistance, reaching a resistive low as the voltage passes through zero, and then ramp up its resistance for the following 1/4 cycle until it reaches its 'normal' resistance at the peak 'negative' voltage (1/2 a cycle from where we started), then repeat over. I think that would trick a meter that only looked at peak current and assumed a sinusoidal waveform. But who knows what other things it might break...
- takingflac 10y agoThis is called phase shifting(1) adding a large enough inductor to all of your resistive loads will cause your power factor(2) to drop. Unfortunately for you the power company bills you for your apparent power useage which takes into account both the real and imaginary parts of your power consumption, it measures your shifted loads. 1. http://www.learnabout-electronics.org/ac_theory/ac_ccts_51.php http://www.learnabout-electronics.org/ac_theory/ac_ccts_51.p... 2.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor