Phase angle controlled heating results in extreme electric bills

[Skogsgurra]

About ten years ago, customers all over Sweden (and probably also in many other countries) noticed that their electric bills jumped sky-high after "intelligent meters" had been installed.

I did tests with three different brands of meters plus an old analog watt-meter (Norma class .5) and also by recording voltages and currents in an Excel sheet. Leaving out most of the details, a snippet of the results is shown below.

This investigation resulted in customers getting a compensation and meters were changed to other makes.

But he percentage that actually protested was low (most installations didn't use phase-controlled "dimming" of their power loads) and the whole thing was silenced down by the authorities.

The meter make was quite common and probably used all over the world.


Question: Have you experienced a similar problem with meters that do not "understand" how power is measured (my suspicion is that they just used voltage and current and multiplied by cos(phi) instead of summing instantaneous energy packets).

If you have experienced the same thing: How was it handled by utilities and law?

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

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Half full - Half empty? I don't mind. It's what in it that counts.

 

[bacon4life]

cuky2000- To clairify the self selection sampling bias of the online survey results graphic, this was the sampling methodology the author used:

The survey was circulated online through various social media outlets including Networks email list, Facebook, and the California EMF Safety Coalition (a discussion group). The survey was also posted on Networks website: www. emfsafetynetwork. org where visitors were invited to take the survey.

Propogating this sort of distorted graphic makes it harder to identify and solve actual accuracy issues like the ones Gunnar documented.

Gunnar-Sorry you have had such a rotten experience with both the utility and the civil authorities when you provided clear evidence of problem. At my utility, the meter shop sets a temporary Power Quality recorder when a customer has a billing or power quality complaint. As far as I know, we have not come across a case where the PQ recorders indicated a significant difference in energy consumption with the regular meters due to harmonics or phase angle controls. We do not use A*S meters. Do you know if A*S has revised the calculation algorithm since you posted in 2014?

 

[stevenal]

Marks,
If you mean a rectifier/inverter with an electro-mechanical meter, possibly. The losses would work against you, though.

 

[waross]

This discussion seems to be about pineapples and mangos.
The original post is NOT about measuring harmonics caused by non-linear loads.
It is about a meter algorithm that did not properly measure distorted wave forms and grossly over charged.
This is not about linear loads subsidizing non-linear loads.
This is about meters GROSSLY over reporting non-linear loads. Not a few percent but hundreds of percent of over charges.
See:

There is also a problem with some of the new meters. They give very high readings in certain cases. I had a very interesting job a couple of months ago where I was asked to find the reason why some customers got their electricity bills almost doubled - in some cases even more - when the new meters were introduced. What I found is astonishing. Certain loads make the meters run between five and six times faster (making the bill five to six times bigger) and that is not because of faulty individual meters, but all meters from a certain manufacturer have the same problem.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[waross]

By the way the current element of an electro-mechanical meter has a very low impedance. I expect that the old meters responded quite well to non-sinusoidal wave forms and low order harmonics.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[Skogsgurra]

It may very well be so, Bill. But there are voltage coils and there are current coils. And the torque they produce on the Ferraris disk is the result of all the components and their respective phase differences. So I do not know how much that will speed up the wheel. Or brake it, or try it to run backwards. Zero sequence components probably just brake it more. That is something for cswilson or ElectricPete to look into. They seem to master that kind of stuff.

I had completely forgotten about the thread that you refer to in your 14:28 comment and have now read it once again. I have made an English translation (the customer got a Swedish version) and I think that it could clarify a few points. I just don't know how to link to a pdf. Any tips?

bacon: You seem to allude to the make that we had problems with. Would an extra "a" fit in the center of your "crypto-acronym"?

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

--------------------------------------
Half full - Half empty? I don't mind. It's what in it that counts.

 

[waross]

I thought about that Gunnar.
My reasoning;
The issue is mostly with the current. The voltage will be mostly sinusoidal.
There is very little inductance in the current coil. Any current will result in torque.
The electro-mechanical meters were probably quite accurate with phase angle controlled loads.
As for harmonics, I expect that the electro-mechanical meters were fairly accurate for low order harmonics.
As for higher order harmonics, they are generally of a low magnitude so we are looking at an error of a very low percentage.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[Skogsgurra]

I'll have to visit a flea market and look for en old meter. This could be interesting. I will compare to the "good" meters and the "mean" ones.

It may take some time to find an old meter. Am also traveling the next few weeks.

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

--------------------------------------
Half full - Half empty? I don't mind. It's what in it that counts.

 

[itsmoked]

I just don't know how to link to a pdf. Any tips?

You find the link of the pdf you want to share. Right-click on it. The little window that opens will offer (pretty far down) "Copy Link Location". Do that and then post it using whatever the site or app uses to post links. Here it's the elipses :

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[itsmoked]

Any of you meter jocks want to study your own meters against a non-PoCo meter you might be interested in these.


All their meter offerings (SCROLL DOWN)

Example of the cloud generated meter data

I'm getting one of their kWhr meters and a unit to upload it to the cloud to study my house usage in-detail as I'm considering going semi-off grid.

Keith Cress
kcress -

http://www.flaminsystems.com

 

[HamburgerHelper]

Matlab simulation of electronic vs induction meters.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...WMAV6BAgEEAE&usg=AOvVaw0Xc-9mOkEG2XmTETElhAtx

Experimental comparison of electronic vs induction.

http://www.academia.edu/13601238/PERFORMANCE_OF_ENERGY_METERS_UNDER_HARMONIC_GENERATING_ENVIRONMENT

The error is greater than I would have guessed in this experiment.


------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.

 

[Skogsgurra]

Thanks, HH!

Looks very interesting. It does not address the problem with the particular brand that I started this thread with. But a lot of insights when it comes to harmonics. I looked for "my" meter brand in the references. Not there. Which was expected.

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

--------------------------------------
Half full - Half empty? I don't mind. It's what in it that counts.

 

[bacon4life]

Gunnar- I have been hoping for 5 years to learn the rest of the identity. Turns out I should have have just Googled with some geographic context. I also came across a news release indicating L&G will be the new meter vendor for Sweden. It would be interesting to find out if the utility will track consumption changes as they switch out from an early AMI meter to a newer AMI meter.