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As energy prices increase, a growing number of people are choosing to steal their gas and electricity.

Anyone see the BBC programme on 20/1/14?

I've seriously thought about stealing electricity. The main thing that stopped me is actually not my natural honesty, though that's strong. And it's not that I can't (I know how and have proved it for myself).

It's the fact that the company I buying electricity from provides the most in the way of wind-generated power. I feel bound not to screw them, I want to support them.

I think in India somewhere between 20% and 40% of electricity is illegally tapped.

This is a growing problem.
Smart meters will help to an extent.

As well as deliberate theft, there is a lot of inadvertant theft. One building in which I worked had all the external lighting connected to the corporation street lighting supply, and therefore unmetered. I doubt that it was deliberate since the customer was a large company, no question of personal gain.
Whoever installed the outdoor lighting probably did it to save time and materials.

Local authorities and their contractors often add extra load to unmetered public lighting supplies, again not for personal gain.

I knew of a block of about 30 flats with a meter for each flat and another meter for common area lighting. This meter was in a hidden and locked cupboard and had never been read since the building of the flats about 40 years before !

Add to that some determined outright theft, often for indoor farming, and one can see the merits of smart meters.

How would a smart meter prevent theft?

It's so smart it can see you tapping the wires.

When my brother first joined the Notts Police a few decades ago one of his first 'jobs' was to go to a Chinese restaurant that had a suspiciously low power bill. They had carefully drilled a hole into the meter underneath the rotating disc and shoved a chopstick in that they used to stop the disc rotating periodically. I think smart meters wont fall for the chopstick trick so easily.

Last week I was reading about earth leakage meters that are used in Residual current devices that are meant to save you from a shock. Turns out they were not initially developed for saving lives but for saving the utilities money because people in the 40s and 50s used to get 'free' power by driving a stake into earth, or just using the earth from a metal pipe to get their power from a live to earth connection that the older meters did not pick up.

fuzzy wrote:How would a smart meter prevent theft?

In several ways.

1) many forms of electricity theft rely on the removal and later replacement of the service fuse, after some illegal alteration has been made. A smart meter will detect and report this.

2) a smart meter records the PATTERN of electricity use rather than just the total consumption. No comsumption registering whatsoever for say 2 weeks at a time would be cause for investigation.
No consumption for an extended period does not not of course PROVE dishonesty, the customer might have gone on holiday and turned the power off, but it would probably warrent some investigation.

3) a smart meter can be accessed remotely, perhaps by an inspector sitting outside the metered property in a van with a laptop. If the lights are on but no, or improbably low consumption is shown, that would be grounds for investigation.
Lighting without mains electricity consumption does not PROVE dishonesty, the customer might be useing a generator, a battery bank, or oil lamps, but it would be grounds for investigation.

4) Examination of the "load profile", and knowledge of any recent heavy loading appliance purchases might also prove interesting. If someone has purchased an electric shower, but the load profile shows no corresponding consumption, that might warrant investigation as to whether the shower has been connected ahead of the meter. Again the data from the smart meter does not PROVE dishonesty, the shower might have been purchased for somone else, or might be stored rather than installed, but it would hilight "high risk customers"

I think smart meters are pushed by the utilities/manufacturers/gov with 'greenwash' carbon credit bollox ie a nice little earner for some shareholders. The gov and utilities will want the remote network 'kill' option for load shedding when voltages dip. Presumably the suppliers don't want to pull whole area breakers when the gas fizzles out, so they can keep emergency services etc running.

fuzzy wrote:I think smart meters are pushed by the utilities/manufacturers/gov with 'greenwash' carbon credit bollox ie a nice little earner for some shareholders. The gov and utilities will want the remote network 'kill' option for load shedding when voltages dip. Presumably the suppliers don't want to pull whole area breakers when the gas fizzles out, so they can keep emergency services etc running.

Yes.

At present the only way of reducing the load in case of emergency is to cut off whole districts, including essiential services.
If time permits, then a rota can be drawn up as was done in the 1970s.
In case of an unexpected frequency collapse then load sheeding is automatic and blacks out large areas (this is very rare, but it has happened)

If however smart meters come into general use, and if they are equiped with a remote control to shut the power off, then load could be thereby reduced whilst leaving say hospitals on.

With even smarter meters (or consumer units), certain loads in the house could be shed, such as the tv, while, say, the lights stay on.

cubes wrote:With even smarter meters (or consumer units), certain loads in the house could be shed, such as the tv, while, say, the lights stay on.

Most unlikely IMHO due to the costs and complications.
How do you keep say the fridge on, and turn the TV off, when both are powered from standard 13 amp sockets.

Even if all power outlets were turned of, it would be simple to plug the TV into a lampholder as used to be done back in the day !

fuzzy wrote:I think smart meters are pushed by the utilities/manufacturers/gov with 'greenwash' carbon credit bollox ie a nice little earner for some shareholders. The gov and utilities will want the remote network 'kill' option for load shedding when voltages dip. Presumably the suppliers don't want to pull whole area breakers when the gas fizzles out, so they can keep emergency services etc running.

Most of the energy experts on a discussion board I take part in, are of roughly the same opinion.

A better sort of smart meter would be one that reported the real time spot price of electricity working in a system in which the price fluctuated depending on available supply. Externalities could be included into the price such that electricity was relatively cheaper on windy, sunny days.

Consumers would have a display on their wall and could switch stuff on and off depending on how willing they were to spend. Some appliances could be automatically controlled to switch off if the price hit a consumer-determined threshold.

That would be truly smart, so I don't suppose it has any chance of happening.

adam2 wrote:

fuzzy wrote:How would a smart meter prevent theft?

In several ways.

1) many forms of electricity theft rely on the removal and later replacement of the service fuse, after some illegal alteration has been made. A smart meter will detect and report this.

2) a smart meter records the PATTERN of electricity use rather than just the total consumption. No comsumption registering whatsoever for say 2 weeks at a time would be cause for investigation.
No consumption for an extended period does not not of course PROVE dishonesty, the customer might have gone on holiday and turned the power off, but it would probably warrent some investigation.

3) a smart meter can be accessed remotely, perhaps by an inspector sitting outside the metered property in a van with a laptop. If the lights are on but no, or improbably low consumption is shown, that would be grounds for investigation.
Lighting without mains electricity consumption does not PROVE dishonesty, the customer might be useing a generator, a battery bank, or oil lamps, but it would be grounds for investigation.

4) Examination of the "load profile", and knowledge of any recent heavy loading appliance purchases might also prove interesting. If someone has purchased an electric shower, but the load profile shows no corresponding consumption, that might warrant investigation as to whether the shower has been connected ahead of the meter. Again the data from the smart meter does not PROVE dishonesty, the shower might have been purchased for somone else, or might be stored rather than installed, but it would hilight "high risk customers"

Slowing down the meter is the least suspicious strategy - i.e., so you pay some money each bill but don't get too greedy.

It looks as though the whole smart meter thing is going to be leap-frogged by Google Nest: http://www.bloomberg.com/video/up-to-ap ... xqbMA.html