Fire the lazy bastards

Steve,

Excellent suggestion.

So...

Our electric company installed "Smart Meters" a couple of month ago.

Our electric bills instantly doubled (really). Last month was over $500. I can't imagine what would happen to anyone with a mill of lathe at home!

Anybody else in this situation?

What do they claim to be smart about the smart meters?

Where are you?

The going in assumption would be that the new meters are wrong, and it would be the utility's job to rebut this.

Machine tools of RCM size do not draw anything like what an electric stove and/or water heater draws.

Joe Gwinn

There is a class action suit over this mess in Dallas right now. I'm in a small town north of there.

Are you sure about that, Joe. I thought most of them were 220 to start with and pulled signifiant power running.

snip->

You can safely assume that a horsepower equals only 746 watts. About half what a small electric heater consumes.

Harold

Not really. Under full load, a typical RCM motor will pull 1500 watts

+/- But the only motors that pull that kind of power CONTINUOUSLY are pumps and compressors. Table saw, drill press, mill, etc etc draw a lot of power but the high loads are short and the use is intermittent.

While running, and water heaters run more hours a day than a lathe or mill, and don't draw anything like nameplate rating unless grunting.

Water heaters and stoves are also 220.

Joe Gwinn

"cavelamb" wrote

We took two of those "smart" thermostats off our rentals because everyone was having the things run 27/7, and the bills dropped by half or more. On, off, temp setting. $20 per.

Steve

How nice. Even though thread drift has already occurred, it's intelligent conversation related to machinery.

Steve

I've had a digital meter that must transmit over power lines since I can look up my energy usage every day on the utilities website. I never noticed a change.

If you have something similar to a public utility commision, there will be a document on their website that explains the rates in detail for every utility company. Most homes pay for KWH but I've heard of rates where VA is used in calculating usage. That could make a big difference if a rpc was in use.

Wes

50% efficiency sounds a bit low to me. ...lew...

Its happening here too - the "Greenwash" is that you will be able to make "choices" about when you use power hungry appliances, ie not in "peak rate" time. Works fine if you want to do something at 2am......

And get your head around this one folks - even if you dont have one yet, you are being charged a fee for when they do fit it. When its fitted, theres another "installation fee" on top of the rental, which continues for ever. So, you are being charged for something you didn't want, will never own, and is being used to make more money from you. Go figure..

And another thing - the meters are capable of measuring the power you feed back into the grid via solar cells - and at a 3x credit - but, this seems to be too difficult for the utilities to work out..at least the people who make up the bills... They are nice bits of technology - remote reading, load shedding if required......how come most new technology is used to make you pay more.....

Andrew VK3BFA.

Then it's time for you to make some sensible observations, perhaps learn a little basic math , and cut the waste. One of these would be a help

to gain some perspective about the energy consumption of all the "little" loads you've probably been ignoring. A few hours doing that stuff could save you some real money.

Bwahaha!

Clearly you use so much energy that you don't have any sort of handle on it other than blaming the evil meter, evil power company, or whatever.

Would you believe... pretty much nothing at all? Say, $1 per day for substantial use of a 12X36. Of course you wouldn't believe that. But the fact remains that even major power tools that draw lots of power, but little energy due to short cycle times, cost very little to run. If that weren't true, then I couldn't be using a lathe or a planer or welding with an off-grid power setup that averages about 15kWh per day. The real mystery why someone who's probably using >7 times as much energy, imagines that a lathe is an energy hog.

You bet there is. Everybody who thought that a "little" cube heater couldn't possibly cost much to run. All the folks who send money to Nigerian princes. Probably millions who believe that their Toyota's computer is conspiring against them. Even more who believe that water, gold, missing persons, etc. can be found with a forked stick or a bent coat hanger. I could go on. But I won't except to say that we're facing an epidemic of "believers" who think that Occam's razor is an eight bladed disposable... the first blade takes some off, the next gets a little more, etc. :-)

Wayne

In the last two months my electric usage doubled according to the smart meter. Also the rate of usage doubled too since I have a demand meter. The bill went from 800 to 1600 dollars for the last two months. And to top that off, I can't log into the meter usage site because another company has already logged in on my meter and I cannot get access.

John

Makes me wonder if the meter software isn't looking at the inrush current and not sampling again for 5 minutes (or until the next edge?)

If it's a Craftsman horsepower, it's a lot less than that (:

I thought the CHP rating was measured by blocking the rotor from turning, applying line voltage and measuring the peak watts before the fuse/motor blew... maybe in an extra cold room with line voltage on the high side.

Marvelous. Now if I could just get PG&E to bill me for Craftsman KWhs.