- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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Probably worth noting, this article is about UK energy meters. Also, smart meters are wildly different all over the world.
Where I live, the meters have a proprietary wireless receiver, with its own frequency, that is owned and operated by the power company.
It’s going to vary, even within counties. A lot of US utility companies are having the same issue, and there are companies that make and sell 3G to 4G adapters for larger coverage areas. For example, microcell that rebroadcasts/converts the 3G signals into a 4G signal for the local towers. Other areas are swapping out 3G for 4G or Lorawan style meters.
And I’m sure even more are just going to arbitrarily create billable usage figures because they outsourced their IT to India, and then outsourced the India team to Pakistan or the Philippines, and then fired them because the CEO’s son is really good with computers. Unfortunately, he’s just now reading my comment and going “oh…fuck”.
How would those microcells be legal? It’s not just that 3G or whatever gets shut down, the frequencies are usually reallocated to something else so you can’t legally operate a 3G network on those frequencies anymore.
oh our water company mentioned they were gonna come this week and replace the meter. I guess this is what thats about lol
This article is about UK energy meters.
It’s possible they’re in the UK
NZ and many other places are doing energy meter replacements (or just modem replacements in the existing meters) due to 2G/3G switch off.
I don’t think anyone does cellular water meters, though. Cellular needs a decent amount of power which is too much to expect from either a ten year battery or trying to use the metering hardware as a generator.
Smart water and gas meters therefore generally use a short-range low power mesh radio system.
Aren’t water systems typically installed alongside electrical systems though? Seems like powering the meter should be a non-issue in most circumstances.
Water meters are installed in a variety of places - while some might be in the building, plenty will be in a pit at the street.
Even if it’s in the same building, you now have the builder/homeowner’s electrician needing to supply power to the meter that could be on the other side of the house from the electrical service. Should it be supplied from a dedicated circuit for reliability? If it’s a retrofit, who pays for the wiring - and plaster/paint for the walls if it wasn’t an easy run?
What if the owner turns the power off and goes away for a month while leaving the garden sprinklers on? Is that OK?
Electrically powered electrical meters work fine because if the meter isn’t powered, nothing else is anyway. And it has to have all the safety and mechanical features for permanent connection to and safe usage of mains power, which adds substantially to the cost.
Trivia: the energy consumed by electric meters is not negligible, though it’s fairly small. The meter is designed so that it does not measure its own power consumption - the power company pays for that, not the customer. Should the customer pay for the water meter’s electricity consumption.
Extra trivia: A suitably efficient turbine could provide the watt or two of power a meter needs to transmit by leaking about a teaspoon or two of water down a drain.
True, but I was saying that because it’s about energy meters, not water meters.
There are many devices that use 2g for data, not just energy meters. ATMs, card payment terminals, alarms, gps trackers, all sorts of qpplications that don’t need a lot of data and can benefit from the better coverage/range of 2g.
that doesn’t mean the problem is exclusive to them
Woot, free parking
Is it a swap of the 2G/3G module? Or is it a full replacement of the meter?
Probably depends on the meter model. Ours was just a modem swap in NZ.
Yep. I’ve been going around converting burglar and fire alarms to 4/5G and trashing the 3G radios. If you haven’t upgraded, your alarm won’t alert your monitoring company if that’s the sole path.
They should have stuck with the mechanical meters. They are reliable and last nearly forever.
Mechanical meters are terrible for tracking real time consumption and managing the grid efficiently. They also pay for themselves because they can catch tampering and don’t require utilities to pay people to bumble around homes to read stupid meters.
Mechanical meters make no sense. They’re a waste of money and not great for a grid that requires intelligence to help get off fossil fuels.
Also, I’m very happy with our smart meter because I haven’t gotten a single wildly-inaccurate “estimated bill” since it was installed.
Oh, I have. The meter stopped transmitting and they just started making stuff up. They did it for months and refused to admit the meter was broken.
It’s cheaper to change all the meters one more time than going back to a human driving his car from house to house to do manual readings…
Also better for the environment.
Lol no
That is the problem. Also there is no MRR with those.
But those don’t come with kickbacks!
