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From: "Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: energy in UK
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2025 13:58:50 +0200
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On 2025-04-19 04:39, Don Y wrote:
> On 4/18/2025 6:43 PM, KevinJ93 wrote:
>> On 4/18/25 2:33 PM, Don Y wrote:
>>> On 4/18/2025 5:38 AM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>> <...>
>>>> I wonder how they are going to power those smart meters. Batteries? 
>>>> The water runs a generator that charges a battery?
>>>
>>> No idea.  But, even replacing batteries (every year or so?) would
>>> be cheaper than coming around and reading EVERY meter EVERY month.
>>
>> The smart gas meters around here are powered by batteries with a 10 
>> year life. They only have a short range wireless link to the smart 
>> electric meter in the same house that can then have a much longer 
>> range link to the utility transceiver on a nearby utility pole.

To do that, the electricity meter has to be designed for that usage from 
the start, maybe a decade before (here).

> 
> How short is short?  OUR gas and electric are adjacent.  But, many homes
> have the gas meter in an alley while the electric is on the load center.
> 
> So, the gas company has an agreement with the electric utility?  When I
> was doing this stuff, comms was the big challenge (measuring power
> and tracking it -- internally -- is easy.  But, getting a tariff with
> "someone" to haul the data back to the utility was a political/business
> issue not easily addressed with technology.

At apartment buildings, if the meters are bundled together in an utility 
room, maybe they can handle a single transmitter with more power. But at 
the sites I have seen the gas meters are not joined in a single room, 
they are either close to each apartment, or grouped in a cupboard at 
each floor.

I am remembering that the water company they said they would use 
gadgetry with SIM cards, so some sort of data connection by mobile phone.


> 
> [PLC won't work as there are too many inductors between the customer
> and the utility.  And, pole-top relays don't save much as there may
> only be 2-4 subscribers on a single transformer.]

Electricity meters here use some kind of PLC. At the big transformer 
(several cubic meters) there is hardware to collect the data from each 
home and either send by another network, or pass somehow to the high 
voltage side of the transformer. Surely the transformer is remotely 
controlled, so the data network is there.

> 
>> Since it has plenty of power, the electric meter provides updates 
>> every few minutes to allow time of use metering. The gas meter only 
>> provides once per day updates, presumably to conserve power.
> 
> 


-- 
Cheers, Carlos.