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From: KevinJ93 <kevin_es@whitedigs.com>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: energy in UK
Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2025 12:38:01 -0700
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On 4/18/25 7:39 PM, 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.
> 
> 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.

I don't know - I imaging a couple of tens of meters. They use ~450MH for 
the gas meter link and ~920MHz for the electric meter.

Where the network coverage or location of the meters precludes the usual 
arrangement PG&E have various RF bridges that can be used.

> 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.

For our local utility and many others in California the same company 
distributes both gas and electricity.

> [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.]
> 
>> 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.
> 
>