"smart" meters for my structures reading 2-3x more power usage than im actually using.. why ?

candymancangt · Jan 2, 2022

I have a question for you all, We recently moved, and the old house had the analog meter on it, the new place has 3 structures on the property.. a barn, a defunct kennel which im going to turn into a workshop and the house itself.

All 3 buildings have these smart meters on them.. Our first electric bill was... well insaine.. 300$.. never in my life have i had an electric bill this high, and it claims we used 900kw of power in the house alone. Not possible.. not when we had the wood stove running nearly 10 days of the month, about 10 more days temps have been in the 50-70s.. and the other few days we did use the heatpump and gas furnace. On the 25th christmas.. it was 74f out.. my mom and I were out cutting down trees to free up the 14 acres of land we have.. The windows were open.. no lights were on, everything was off.. but SOMEHOW we used 6kw of power at 11:30 am.. at 11:30 am we were outside.. So explain to me how we used 6,000 watts of power in one hour with the heat off, and the windows open at 74f outside temps

The house is single level with a crawl space in one section and basement in another, the furnace propane is new 2016, the heatpump is 30 years old nearly, but it was looked over by a professional company the r22 charge was good, the system worked, the coil needed slight cleaning but other than that it works.

Anyway, i cannot grasp how much power is being used in this house with nothing running besides the fridge/freezer which is older but set high so it doesnt run alot. We just moved.. so we have nothing in the house and the lights i changed to LED right away.. The Kennel for example. Had a motion sensor flood light that was broken, it would flicker on and off, staying on for 10 min, then turning off, and flicker on again for 10 min.. turn off and repeat.. It had a LED Flood from GE i put in it, that draws 14W....

How in the heck, is the daily electric bill for that barn at .13kw per hour ? Thats 130 watts per hour.. It should be under 100, hell under 50w. But it keeps reading 130watts. Whats even more interesting, is i finally removed that flood, and installed a 50W High pressure sodium dusk to dawn light. Its on 12 hours a day.. I can see when it comes on and off, and guess what.. The usage hourly says 130 watts. aka .13kw.. When the light turns off, it drops to 0kw, then in the evening it goes back to .13kw.. There is no way a 50w HPS is running at 130 watts, even with an ineffeciant ballast.. lol, There is also no way a 14w LED flood is running at 130w as well

Seems suspicious to you ??? Sure does to me..

The barn is the same thing, but NOT as bad.. I have two mercury vapor lamps 175.. dusk to dawn running on a 30ft pole that gets power from the barn. I also see when they come on an off, as power from the barn goes from 0 kw to .50kw.. You mean to tell me two 175w lamps, are using 500 watts per hour ? That would mean each lamp is using 250w. Thats just not possible. even if they were horribly in efficient ballasts..

The house though is the same.. I have 320w of high pressure sodium lights running for just 4-5 hours.. When i turn them on and off, i can see the jump and drop in power usage.. The hours they are running the house meter says power usage is on average about 0.9 to 1.10 KW.. The house during the day uses around .13........... ooooohhh get it ? another .13 kw usage when nothing is on.. Anyway, .13 minus 1.0kw is 87kw.. How are 320w of light magically using 870 watts ?

Why are all the meters reading .13kw for the lowest readings. If i turn on a 5w light bulb... the reading shows .13kw Im basically being told im using 3x more for energy than im actually using.. Im very very mad, and ive called the power company about this, but all they try to do is get a "energy" saving guy to call me and tell me what to turn on and off, and how to use my power.. Listen im not stupid.. i see the pattern here.. I can have a 14w led running and it says im using 130w of power.. then i put a 50w high pressure sodium fixture in and it says im using 130w.. I can turn on a 5.5w LED and itll say im using 130w..

The smart meter is NOT smart.. i dont think it can read power usage properly like a analog meter can. Especially when it comes to energy efficient light bulbs like LEDs

littlespark · Jan 2, 2022

I you’ll have to talk with your supplier. They may fit a “check” meter in between to see if the smart is operating and counting correctly.

If you can, turn everything off for an hour or two and see if there’s any usage. Off at the mainswitch, so there’s no power maybe leaking to ground on the final circuits.

I would think an electrician would have a simple clamp meter that they could check the current running through specific cables.. may give a good indication

pc1966 · Jan 2, 2022

As @littlespark suggests, try putting off everything at your panel (distribution board = DB) and see what the supply meter does.

Without suitable and safe test equipment (like a clamp ammeter with at least CAT-III rating for electrical safety) all you can really do is make use of the supply meter to see if there is a fault, or if the supply meter looks dodgy. In the latter case you will have to get your provider to investigate and as necessary replace the meter(s).

However, you can start by seeing if putting the whole DB off makes a difference, if so then you can put off all breakers, put the panel back on, and switch on one breaker at a time and watch the meter for long enough to tell if you have crazy use on that circuit.

If you do see unexplained power use when a circuit is back on, then really you need to get an electrician out to see why. If the breaker in the panel is not a GFCI type you could get several amps flowing to a poor ground without it tripping, but that would cause a significant expense in electricity use (as well as potentially being dangerous if some metalwork is now "live").

candymancangt · Jan 2, 2022

I have turned power off to the whole house before when re-doing all the electrical outlets and light switchs (dont trust 30 year old outlets plus their yellow nasty)

The three hours it was off, i saw 0 usage on the meter and on the smart hub it reported 0 kw as well, What im getting at here is its reporting MORE usage per item than what they are actually drawing.

The Kennel for example, a 14w led it reports 130 watts usage, and if i have a 50w high pressure sodium on instead it still reports 130w. But whats interesting is this. This picture is the kennel which has only that 50w high pressure sodium light on. See how it says .13kw where i put my mouse. All those lines are .13kw, thats when its on dusk to dawn for 12 hours. How is a 50w light drawing 130w of power. Notice the high marks ? Those are .26kw, How is it suddenly drawing 260 watts..

If i go back a few weeks when i had the 14 watt led on instead. It still reads .13kw so 130w draw.

The house is doing the same thing. During the day when nothing is on or running, just plugged in like say the fridge/microwave and stove clocks.. No tv no computers.. nothing but those.. It will also read .13kw... It seems when anything under 130w is running, these meters cannot read the wattag being drawn properly. I can understand you guys are saying, MAYBE a breaker is bad, maybe i have something sucking power and i dont know. Maybe its this or that... but to see the same thing on 3 buildings with the same smart meters on ? No way thats just a coincedance

So anything thats energy efficient is not reading the correct wattage. If i have 320w of lights running, its telling me im drawing 870 watts. If i have 300w of mercury vapor lamps on the barn running, its saying they are using 5-600w.

It seems to read 2-3x higher wattage usage for ANYTHING. When i called to ask the power company to come out here and see if they can find a problem.. they told me that they dont do that kind of thing, and just reffered me to a person to help little ol me understand power conservation LOL..

They dont seem to get that when the building has no lights on... It does in fact read 0kw, as you can see in my picture.. see the 0kw usage during the day ? But once i turn any light on, doesnt matter what wattage light.. it will somehow claim its using 130watts of power. Ive done some research on these smart meters, LOTS and LOTS of claims out there that they are reporting 3-4-5-6x more power usage than something is actually drawing, especially for energy efficient items like LED light bulbs.. I read that some Universities reported that the smart meters cannot tell the difference between power being used by a 60w incandescent bulb or a 13w LED, they also cannot tell the usage between something thats being dimmed.

I think what im going to do on Monday is call the power company back, and ask they remove these smart meters and put a analog meter back on my buildings. And I will write down the power usage on the meter every night/morning before my dusk to dawn light comes on for the kennel to see if there is a difference on the analog meter over what my smart meter was reading. That, and see if my electric bill drops or not

pc1966 · Jan 2, 2022

candymancangt said:
The Kennel for example, a 14w led it reports 130 watts usage, and if i have a 50w high pressure sodium on instead it still reports 130w. But whats interesting is this. This picture is the kennel which has only that 50w high pressure sodium light on. See how it says .13kw where i put my mouse.

The on/off nature of the meter reading suggests it reports in units of 0.13kWh so if you are using less then you seen nothing at one time, and then 0.13 next, then nothing again. I.e. 0.07kW would appear as a 50% on/off cycle.

You would need to get the meter total at some point, run your 50W light for X hours, and then get the meter total again and see if you get 50W * X hours of a difference.

However, you might also have some spurious load (fault or unknown bit of equipment running somewhere), so checking for any crazy total use when you have circuits on is a good idea.

candymancangt · Jan 2, 2022

the light runs for 12 hours a day. 50x12 is 600 watts, so 0.6kw, give or take the efficiency of the ballast lets say its using 55w or even 60w to run the 50w light.. so 60x12 is 720w... and im being generous here.. I should be using lets say 600-720w a day on this building, when in fact its telling me im using roughly 1.2kw of power every day.. Look at this picture.. Its saying im using 1200 watts of energy, for a 50w fixture running 12 hours. My fixture would have to be 100-120w to get that kind of reading.

Its doing this for the barn as well, the only lights on at night are 175x2 mercury vapor lamps. Thats 350w of power,,, lets pretend the ballasts use 50w more power just to run them, which would never happen to a ballast like these.. but lets pretend.. Thats 450w of power.. but its telling me im using around 6-7kw of power.. look at my picture.. im on 6.91kw look how many days it read 6.91kw how are 350w of lights using 600-700w of power ??, the one day it was really low i had the lights off minus the 4 inside lights that are 10w leds when i brought the horse in at 5pm, and those 4 10w leds were only on for less than 5 min.. Notice it reads .13kw, so Yea it seems to think i used 130w in 5 minutes with 4 leds that are 40w.

If this meter is reading in .13kw increments.. then the power company is over charging me on power and reporting INCORRECT power usage..

Just for shts and giggles, i just went to the kennle, i flipped every breaker off, minus the one for the 3 interior light fixtures. I unscrewed every bulb.. but one, and that one is a 13w led GE light.. Lets see what happen in the next 24-48 hours.. How much do you want to bet the meter will be reading .13kw for every hour i leave a 13 watt bulb on. If t his is the case then that means instead of 8736 watts the light would use running 24./7 for 30 days.. The meter will instead show 87 kilowats, vs 8 kilowats. At .128 cents per KWH, that led should be using 1.50$ in power roughly, but i garuntee this meter will show the 87kw which would be 11$

Do you see the pattern ?

Lucien Nunes · Jan 2, 2022

It might be reporting the power consumption in 130 watt steps, but not actually totalizing those steps but the actual power used. I.e. it might be more accurate internally for billing purposes than the readout suggests.

the light runs for 12 hours a day. 50x12 is 600 watts, so 0.6kw

Please, if we are going to talk about power and energy, can we distinguish between watts (W) / kilowatts (kW) of power and watt-hours (Wh) / kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy? E.g. a 50W light switched on for 12 hours uses 0.6kWh, not 0.6kW. Watts aren't energy. There's potential for confusion otherwise.

UNG · Jan 2, 2022

If you are that concerned about the energy usage / misreading meter why not install a check meter in the supply to verify whether the smart meter is misreading the usage

Eddy Currents · Jan 2, 2022

candymancangt said:
Im very very mad, and ive called the power company about this, but all they try to do is get a "energy" saving guy to call me and tell me what to turn on and off, and how to use my power..

There is advice for a process to follow on the gov website where you can request an independent meter test to test for accuracy...

Electricity meters: independent testing of accuracy

What you can expect if you request a meter test.

www.gov.uk

candymancangt · Jan 2, 2022

Lucien Nunes said:
It might be reporting the power consumption in 130 watt steps, but not actually totalizing those steps but the actual power used. I.e. it might be more accurate internally for billing purposes than the readout suggests.

Please, if we are going to talk about power and energy, can we distinguish between watts (W) / kilowatts (kW) of power and watt-hours (Wh) / kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy? E.g. a 50W light switched on for 12 hours uses 0.6kWh, not 0.6kW. Watts aren't energy. There's potential for confusion otherwise.

how is saying the kennel has used 20kwh so far from a 50w light, 15 days in when its running only 12 hours... accurate for billing, when it fact its using less than half that, by math it should be more around 9-10kwh.. Sounds more like its giving them more money out of my pocket than it should be ? And not being accurate at all

candymancangt · Jan 2, 2022

UNG said:
If you are that concerned about the energy usage / misreading meter why not install a check meter in the supply to verify whether the smart meter is misreading the usage

ill look into that, and see if i can wire it into the line the light is using so see how much its actually using.. but regardless, the light is a 50w high pressure sodium bulb, at 20KWH reading on the kennel so far, by math the fixture should be using 9kwh.. so according to the smart meter my 50w fixture is using nearly 120w of power.. if that were true the sodium bulb would explode.. Its just total bs these meters on all 3 buildings are making 0 sense.

Ill get to the bottom of this, ill try the way you mentioned. But for now, i flipped the breakers all off but the one for that 13w led bulb in the ceiling inside the building. I bet 100$ itll be reading .13kwh as well with that. Ill report back in 24-48 hours when i get the new readings from the meter

"smart" meters for my structures reading 2-3x more power usage than im actually using.. why ?

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