Hack Digital Electric Meter
A group of Dutch scientists have been testing out some of today’s “smart” electrical meters to check their accuracy, among other things. Not ones to disappoint, the scientists have found consistentlyWith experiments lasting for six months, the researchers tried to focus on meters representative of those commonly used in the Netherlands and manufactured between 2004 and 2014. Moreover, the researchers tried to reproduce standard household energy consumption patters rather than focusing on stress tests.Their results? Well, “results varied wildly, with some meters reporting errors way above their disclosed range, going from -32% to +582%. Tests with uncommon results were repeated several times and the results were within a few percents of the original.” Moreover, “The greatest inaccuracies were seen when researchers combined dimmers with energy saving light bulbs and LED bulbs.” Not constrained to energy saving light bulbs, the inaccuracies are, ironically, tied to devices with integrated energy saving features.
This video will show you what you'll need to know to hack a digital electric meter. You'll need 2 magnets, one much bigger than the other, an AC adaptor that you'll cut into pieces, or some speaker wire, distilled water, electrical tape, a knife, some plascic wrap, and a plastic cup. Remember, this is illegal, and shown only for educational purposes. You probably cannot. A significant reason for introducing digital power meters -replacing the older technology - was to overcome the single problematic issue of the older and venerable technology. Modern meters measure voltage, current and phase a.
(Certainly makes us want to keep a )“The reason for faulty readings appears to be the current sensor, and the associated circuitry,” said researchers. “The experimental results show that static energy meters can be pushed into faulty reading (positive and negative) if sufficiently fast pulsed currents are drawn by the consumer”It is worth noting that there is contradictory research published by “the European voice of the providers of smart energy solutions” that maintains that “there is no reason to question smart metering technology”. Still, we wouldn’t blame you if you.Thanks acs for sending this in!.Posted in, Post navigation. One of the problems with current sensors used in meters is that they are cheap and doesn’t have the frequency response to handle some high-frequency loads. The frequency response on CT sensors are usually less than the 8th harmonic (. So if a current transformer is no good, would the old fashioned method be better? IE an inline resistor?
When I say resistor I suppose I mean a couple of feet of thick copper cable, something in milli-ohms or the like. Then measure the voltage across, using a sensitive amplifier.While there are lots of very fast switch-mode PSUs around now, they’re usually pretty low power. Phone chargers and the like. I suppose consoles and computers use them, TVs too. Actually they’re probably more common than I thought. Not sure anything uses old-fashioned heavy iron transformers any more. Still, surely most power consumption is from things using raw mains, big motors and heaters?
Little DC electronic doodads must only be sucking a few dozen watts in an average house.As far as spikes too fast for the meter to notice, would putting a capacitor across the mains help? To effectively short or buffer any quick spikes. Small enough that it doesn’t carry significant current at 50 / 60Hz. Maybe I know of a friend’s, cousin’s, boyfriend’s, aunt, who observed a greater than expected drop in consumed power when 2 Walmart Great Value brand A19 60W replacement LED bulbs were put in a fitting dimmed with a standard old rotary dimmer. Or maybe I don’t, or maybe that’s not the reason it happened, or maybe I dreamed it.
I had to do this at one point. They talked so much bs and diverted so much not even the legal help knew what to do to stop the debt collectors banging my door and posting me a letter that cost $300 every day.My readings were below average for a single person, they refused to accept anything less than what a 5person family would use and demanded full access to my bank account as the only means of payment.
Dirty bustards the lot of em. They had orders to get everyone on the card system as that cannot be undone once installed and costs twice as much.I could have been paying for me and nine imaginary people. Then again, manufacturers should be made responsible for the poor power factor of the devices they sell, because the parasitic power turns up as extra I^2R losses in the transmission grid and transformer hysteresis, and the “energy saving” bulbs etc.
Don’t actually save as much energy as they claim.It’s especially bad for LED products which may literally blink at 100-120 Hz to claim that some 6-7 Watt LED (400-500lm) is equivalent to a 60 Watt (850lm) indandecent bulb – yeah, it may seem so because of the stroboscope effect.A good way to do that is to make consumers pay for the power factor – include it in the meter and suddenly all manufacturers have to add proper PFC instead of just claiming they do PFC and then not. Yah, don’t forget we’re still working on explaining why it’s a dumb idea to yank the ground pin to plug protected equipment into 2 pin extension cords.It’s only about 10 years since WiFi became ubiquitous, but the modern consumer has already forgotten that internet happens mostly by wires coming into their house, CATV or POTS lines, and you’ll hear them saying their wifi is broke or they need new wifi and realise they mean internet. Then trying to get the concept over that there’s something that converts their internet to wifi, is getting like kicking dead whales down the beach. It’s getting to the point where average people too dumb about it to attempt to help them. Get some thread “my wifi sucks, what’s the best wifi.” and when you’ve finally got it sorted out that they’re actually really having ISP problems, some Charlie Know-Nothing pipes in with “I’ve got a DLINK it’s an amazing wifi and they’re on sale in walmart for only $60” and bugger knows whether he’s talking about his VoIP box or his router, and whether it’s even the same unit on sale in Walmart, but thread derail and victim goes off to buy one, after cancelling current ISP, back 2 days later on a friends internet connection, all stress and panic because yeah, it did nothing. So you haul the thread around again to ISP and suspect it was physical infrastructure probs with either the POTS or CATV in their area, so nudging them to try the other alternative, and Charlene Know-Nothing turns up and is all “Maxleech ISP is the greatest, OMG OMG” and before you know it they’re signing up for a re-seller of their previous problem aaarghThese are the people you’ve got to get to understand PFC, good luck with that. In the US it would likely be a lot more work than that, as most of us have our power meters mounted outdoors.
Installation would require having a licensed electrician plumb in a new meter base, calling the power company out to temporarily shut down your power (good luck with that once they ask you why), wire in said base, have it inspected by local authorities, call the power company out to turn your power back on (if they still agree to sell you power), and then pay most of the people involved – Or some scenario similar to this. Cheap meters measure instantaneous power and average the data samples. The actual power consumption is correct if you measure voltage and current at very high frequency ( 600Hz for 60Hz AC for example), multiply them, and sum them.
Hack Digital Electric Meter
That’s the discrete integration of power (the mathematical formula is using a integral sum see the section active power from here: ) and it does take into account the power factor obviously. So the any “cheap” meter doing so (using shunt resistor for current in order not to be affected by induction or capacitance issues) will give much better result than the fancy “non-invasive” meters.However, because it’s very trouble some to ask consumer to adapt their power factor, most utility simply charge active power and take the reactive power induced loss on their own loss. So either they increase their kWh cost for the average power factor loss, either they cheat the measurement in their meters. The former seems more honest to me, IMHO.
I’ve worked in the R&D of 1 – 3 phase smart electricity meters.A lot of effort goes into detecting and correctly measuring different complex loads, this results in a very complex measuring logic with a very high execution frequency. The idea is really for the meters to measure as exactly as is possible even in very noisy environments.In our case, the calibration of each meter was performed in our factory which had been certified by a third party certification body. The equipment for calibration was purchased from yet another third party company which specializes in that kind of stuff.The power companies have no control over any of these steps. From an electricity metering production company point of view, they are just the end customers with no insight into the production of the electricity meter.
To sell electricity meters, you have to have them calibrated by a certified body (in this case by our own production line).The certification to do calibration is legally binding, and the meters are randomly checked now and then by the third party certification body. If the calibrated meters are not within specifications, the calibration certification is revoked and the site can no longer provide calibration. This is more or less a death sentence to electricity meter production companies, or at the very minimum a large economical sink hole because they have to hire a certified company to perform the calibration for them.In short, if a certified company messes up the calibration, they are going to regret it. There is likely no economical incentive which will make up for taking such a risk. Really reassuring article for somebody that will have his electrical meter replaced by a smart one this or next week Probably a good thing i have written down all my readings of the last few years (i look at the meter every two months and transmit the reading to the company (btw something that really is no problem for me, i don’t need that automatic stuff) so i get a REAL bill, not a bill based on estimations with a “official” reading + bill correction only once a year), will see if something changes. I don’t remember how the stupid uh i mean smart meter that will be installed here works, seems like the electrical company don’t really wants to be open about his new meter – trade secret and so you know.
Of course, but the argument they use is “trade secret”.