Smart Meters...are they as smart as this article claims?

celestialgrrl

Hi All

I'm really curious about this and would be very interested to hear your thoughts about the claims in the following extract from a piece in the Irish Examiner about Smart Metering.

here's the extract..

..."Basically, once set up with your supplier, appliance-itemisation registers changes in the draw of current when specific things are turned on. It’s something to do with mains harmonics and time-domain behaviour (whoosh — straight over my head).

Electric Ireland explains its appliance-itemisation as “each appliance uses electricity in a unique manner, think of it like an appliance fingerprint. Using our algorithms, we detect and extract these fingerprints from your electricity usage data.”..."

Slightly Kwackers

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058319230/smart-meters-are-they-as-smart-as-this-article-claims

It sounds like just the thing for an online snake oil salesman. "Eliminate your harmonics and drop your power costs with a superconducting gold plated plug fuse"

I saw an article that described this recognition by virtue of the harmonics at 48kHz, even a resistive load such as a kettle.

While you could in theory identify none linear appliances, a resistive load such as a kettle or light bulb [filament] is not going to be identifiable by anything more specific than IV or IV against time if it's a heater of some sort.

The article was nonspecific and peppered liberally with "coulds", so frankly I would have more faith in oxygen free gold plated speaker cables being able to give Dustin the Turkey a fast track to a world tour.

I was a bit disappointed with my meter, it didn't provide an instant dynamic snapshot of the consumption, just an update of the digits as and when. To monitor the current I dropped an Amp Clamp across the supply feed. You could get an idea from that what was on, but I don't have much on.

One thing I didn't like about the procedure was the new meter started at zero kWh. The person removing the original didn't leave a record of the reading on removal.

That would be something I couldn't have done when changing any instrument out. One always went for obvious traceable continuity.

con747

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058319230/smart-meters-are-they-as-smart-as-this-article-claims

Have a read of this thread https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058311315/is-there-any-reason-left-not-to-go-smart-meter#latest but bottom line is they can't tell which appliance you are using. It just shows consumption not what is consuming AFAIK.

celestialgrrl

Thanks Slightly Kwachers... I appreciate you taking the time to give such an entertaining response and to enlighten me...🙂

celestialgrrl

Thanks Con747 and thanks for the link to thread...will check it out 🙂