How It's Made: Smart Electric Meters 

now in my gen z days everything is all eletronic

That's funny, a guy literally came to my house today in ireland to read our meter.

They still come here.

those meters were easy to cheat :D using a magnet can't do it with the newer ones as they have magnet sensors in them

The gas man still comes around my neighborhood.

Jash here too!!!

🤮

This voice is as iconic as the Forensic Files narrator

USCSB guy is good too

You should listen to the good older one back in the day on the discovery channel. he was the OG

Yes indeed, I’m grateful I no longer have to do power cuts.

When was that? Since the start of mass production of PCB based electronics there have been automated lines, before that electronic devices usually had no PCB and just ran wires from separate components which was a mess... Wave soldering has been around far longer so there was never really a time where humans had to do all the placement and soldering on PCBs...

I remember when all wiring in electronics was point-to-point, and also when the forerunners of the circuit board began to appear in small vacuum tube radios. They were called couplets and were small, flat, sealed assemblies of perhaps 6 components inside. Typically, 6 wires came out one edge and were soldered to pins of tube sockets, and so forth.

Welcome to the brand new world

I work at one of these plants and not all lines are automated, alot of them are still done by hand and it's so tedious

in America they're still CONTACT tracing for COVID but they're not saying anything about it! nobody is talking about it or conversations are restricted! this sucks. another Bluetooth device phoning home. Google will certainly take advantage of it

Ya yeet

Great dropping

we up ‼️

Rise up

It's been aired before

I used to work at a meter lab and I remember my boss telling me about a simple way that an electromechanical meter could be disabled without having to mess with magnets or anything similar, and impossible to prove tampering. All you needed was a magnifying glass (yes, I understood the theory what he was hinting at, and no, I will not share it).

@@observe_and_purport the visual inspection was usually from the distance, the distance where the numbers could be read. many times when there was a more detailed inspection (you knew when) the plastic cover was removed very carefully (the one with the hole) and another perfect one was added with 2 points of superglue. usually there were 2 inspectors per 2,3,4 localities and if they took a penny from each house that had this system without saying a word easy money...

Most will have a sim card and use a cellular network. Edit: that's the standard where I live but in some cases they use RF to a nearby data collector, then that one uses some connection to pass on the data from multiple meters.

He is right. The frequency they use is close to the same frequency a garage door opener uses. The information is also encrypted so information can’t be stolen or someone outside of the company can’t kill the grid

The ones that My local utility company uses operate off of a either 850 or 900 MHz mesh network system meaning each meter acts as a repeater and then every so often there are access points mounted on the utility poles.

The guy from the Applied Science RU-vid channel took one apart years ago. It's a quality video, all his videos are very neat, and he has a nice demeanor to listen to.

Uh I thought plastic is one of hardest materials to deteriorate? You know, that's kinda why we have so much of it in landfills and oceans. It doesn't degrade easily.

Yeah and the next 30 year that might degrade

More or less the exact same thing, different circuit board maybe.

True. Every command is recorded with the user name attached to it. Only way to mistakenly disconnect someone is if the meter information is incorrect. Records are important

This is current? We use itron at work and these meters look like the ones we use.

these meters send information over cellular network and only 1 or 2 times in one day, so they emit as much radiation as sending 2 text messages

@@piezku They don't use cellular. They uses a dedicated mesh networking system to carry the data.

@@overamped23042 depends on the device / location of installation

Idk what a grandpas experts is but I can say I worked in this production facility with hundreds of other people. hundreds of these meters would be actively emitting rf at a time and it was not an issue for anyone. Which makes sense. It's all non ionizing radiation. Not any different than your cell phone or toy rc car or wireless home security system. And yes. Some of those meters use 3G 4G 5G or some other rf band. Some even communicate through the power lines themselves. Just depends on what the utility wants for whatever area.

My REMC installed a smart meter on my service about 10 years ago; it took me two years to realize it was causing problems with the controller on my furnace, and the last eight years to solve the problem. I wish those d**n smart meters would goto the junk pile.

they will, if you don't have enougn carbon credit score or don't take all the goverment mandated vaccines.

if they don't like what you're doing they would just go to your house and disconnect the power regardless. A smart meter making a private company turning it off remotely makes no difference.

cant speak on the distrust part, but there’s a safety aspect of it too. Wouldn’t want homes with solar pumping energy back into the grid while someone’s working on it.

Or if you tweeted something against the government...

Or if you tweeted something against the government...

Also they can easily be manipulated by the power companies to scam customers.

​@@rubiconnnand hacked. It's a whole new fail point in an already weak system, except these fail points have millions of possibilities to access.

Peek hours? Is that when you peek trough the curtains? The term is PEAK hours.

@@patverum9051 through*

@@frostbite1991 🤣🤣

They would disconnect at the distribution substation, not individually at the meter. There’s things called “underfrequency relays” which operate automatically when generation is severely deficient.

@@jeremyloveslinux The idea behind load shedding at the meter is that you can be way more granular and instead of being limited to just what you can disconnect at the substation you can now disconnect e.g. 1/3rd of the homes you would have had to disconnect. Also in practice if they're cutting load based on current high usage then you'd be able to do way less than that as one home with the dryer running and fast charging an EV will easily draw down the same power as 10 other homes that are lightly loaded just running lights and low load appliances. They would disconnect at the substation ordinarily, part of the promise of smart meters is being able to limit outages due to load shedding to a much smaller group of homes.

Yep, originally sold to the public as a time and money saving device for the electric company....But as usual, this key piece in the electrical supply for your home has been weaponized. Why do you think the globalists want to end hydrocarbon fuels? Takes a major portion of energy away from the populus and makes them dependent on ONE source of energy that can be managed remotely.....Sorry Mr. jones, you've run your alotment of energy credits out for this month.....Your service will be restored in 16 days....Have a nice day.

Safer way to disconnect for non payment. What are your thoughts?

Using a Flipper Zero to shut off power to houses. @@Amitech77

Easy enough to defeat

Sure, but utilities can't just shut power off for no reason. You get your power shut off for non payments or tampering.

Prolly will be when he dies. :/

Lol

Lol

Or attacked by a mean dog!!

Overcharging is relative, what these meters enable is monitoring how much and when you're using. Time-of-use is the major factor that will determine how hard in the pocket you will get hit.

@@WASTEOFTIMESTUDIOS At least in Germany, every energy meter, smart or not, used for billing purposes must be calibrated. No idea if the US do this too...

It requires calibration by a third party to prevent something like that. But who knows 🤷‍♂️ it could have happened before

@@Archer198026 *does that too. It is grammatically considered "the US, the country", therefore singular.

@@Gavriel-og6jv Congratulations, you found an error. You can keep it, have fun with it.

U know they install this for make easier for them and u pay right .

they do

The smart meter can't see the difference between a 2000W vacuum or a 2000W washer/hob/powertool/airconditioner/... so no, unless there's a massive grid capacity problem they won't shut down your power if you use too much of it at once, they earn a lot of money when you use a lot of electricity, stopping you from doing that when the grid allows for it would be terrible business.

Smart meters actually have no idea what appliance youre using, they only know that power is being used, if you pull 2000W for example, it dosent know if its going to 1 vaccum cleaner or 20 lightbulbs

@@lickablestinkage7783 it's unlikely someone turns on and off 20 light bulbs at the same time once or twice per week. it's a vacuum. if still in doubt, look at the power factor and you'll know it's from a motor. yeah, it's a vacuum.

No reason to be sorry about that. Here in Belgium we're converting to smart meters atm and there's only downsides: - When you have solar panels, the old meters spun backwards on sunny days and forwards during the winter months. Now injection and consumption is measured separately and we get a LOT less money for the power we inject than we have to pay for the power we consume. - The old meters just registered how much power you used and you pay a fixed price per kWh. If you had a double meter you could have a different price for daytime and nighttime use but that's it. With the smart meters they also check how you spread your usage and adjust pricing on that: slightly cheaper if you spread out your consumption... but if like most people you don't use a lot of electricity during the day and then start cooking, laundry, watching TV, using the computer all at once, you have to pay a "peak tariff" supplement - With the old meters, if you missed a monthly payment, you got one or two free warnings before they forced you to get a payment plan, and you had to be a lot behind before they limited or shut-off the supply. With the new meters, by the time you get a second warning they already limited your supply to less than what an oven uses and they can even turn off the gas since those are "smart" now as well. The pros are basically nothing: - You don't have to mail in the reading and allow the meter person in every 2-4 years anymore, which isn't really a hassle at all - You can buy a device that plugs in to the smart meter to track your energy consumption real-time, but that was already possible before by installing a metering device between the analog meter and the fusebox, ánd it wasn't really necessary before since there was no price difference between consumption and injection, nor peak tariffs...

Not all of them do.

Me either, but makes sense that the option to add one could easily be added. The one-time cost of having it added to the meter could save an employee time and fuel from not having to drive out to the residence and pull the meter off, put on some little dielectric condoms over the contacts and put the meter back on (At least that's how most power companies cut power to a residence) It wouldn't be worth it though if the meter didn't already have remote connectivity, because over their lifetime, how often do you think most meters ever have to be disconnected?

It's actually been around for at least 10yrs since I started working with these meters.

Theyre actually really simple devices

Oh you're a conspiracy theorist

@@wildlifewarrior2670 a term coined by the cia to discredit those with opposing views. And you're a sheep i guess.

@@user-nu2pj2ch7t yeah sure okay

@@user-nu2pj2ch7t oh by the way here's a novel idea don't purchase one they're listening anyway if you have a cell phone in your pocket all the time don't you

@@wildlifewarrior2670 read my words closely, it says "another way" I'm well aware of the risk to privacy cellphones pose, additionally these are often times mandatory so its not as simple as don't get one for some people. find it weird your inclination to argue this with me but I've said my piece. Take care sheep!

Yes, that is the point of an electricity meter, to meter how much electricity you use... Next up: your vacuum cleaner turns on every time you use it!...

@@someguy4915 Nah dude, they can literally tell what you're using by its power signature. I work with these meters and their associated equipment and they can %100 tell when, how, and what and you are using.

@@Smokkedandslammed Nope, they know the total power consumption, but even stuff such as power factor isn't measured, meaning they cannot differentiate what type of consumers you are using such as the difference between an old light bulb and a computer. Something you would know if you worked '%100' with them, whatever that means.

@@Smokkedandslammed Okay, sure dude, whatever you want to believe... The 'power signature' does not exist, at best you can guess the type of device by checking the power factor, which these meters cannot do... Since you work with them, tell me what equipment I'm using...

@@someguy4915 Hold on, let me compute and enter some algorithms....Ok, got it....Ohhhh dang, you were right, I can't tell if you have your real doll heater plugged in or the heater for your flesh light tucked between your mattress and box spring. I can tell that what ever it is gets turned on and off a lot though...

It's very high

Very accurate.

i doubt they are allowed to do that, just sue them and then buy a mansion with the proceeds

@@petergibbons607 i didnt get you are you. liveing in UK or something ?

@@cypa3458 no i'm not from ukraine. however if they are allowed to shut you off, just use a hammer and destroy the meter and then say someone else did it.

@@petergibbons607 i asked you live in UK or something?

@@petergibbons607 im not russian im indian for anonymous presents i choice this user name

caught doing that though you would be arrested

@@dawn1berlitz most certainly but it's nice to know in case you need electricity for an emergency 👍 you can get yourself a neodymium magnet 👍

@@dawn1berlitz I mean I guess if there was an emergency you could just knock the thing off the wall and then run a jumper 🤣👍

@@rvlifestylelivin not really as they will see an outage and go to investigate it

@@dawn1berlitz it will not come up as an outage, an outage would be detected because of lack of continuity

We use itron meters and they don't have SIM cards or communicate on cellular networks, they talk to each via a mesh network on the Zigbee protocol which in turn talks to Pole Mounted Routers (that do have SIM cards and are pole mounted) that work on a redundant network of our own internal radio communications system as well as cellular networks.

some of them do, whatever is cheapest for each situation

That's illogical. The power company (or the WEF if your claim is remotely true) would've stood a chance to profit more by charging more if you "went over your limit". If you're going to make a conspiracy theory, at least put "their" main intention (profit) in mind!

@@scythal It's not about profits it's about controlling people.

@Kl Sc Source for this claim? 30w is complete bs, 2-3 watts would've been a somewhat believable claim and even that is way more than they consume. Typical power draw would be around 0.2-0.5 watts max consumption with typically the consumption within the lower milliwatts.

no, the meter takes its power before the metering happens. and yes because ultimately all those costs get passed on. you could say that you even paid for the meter but now you don't have to pay the guy to drive around to check them.

No they can't, they can turn on or off the electricity supply, that's it. If you're afraid they might turn off the power on you for no reason, buy a generator or a solar-battery setup. It's your choice to use "smart"-device in your home and to connect them to the internet. Sure, if you made your entire house so "smart" you can just shout "Hey Google, keep the house at 70F as long as the solar panels deliver power, allow 7 degrees of variation when using grid power," somebody could probably hack in to that and freeze/boil you in your own home, or you could possibly sign in on a program that allows the energy company to raise or lower your thermostat depending on grid capacity, but that's entirely your choice and risk to take.

More like know when you're home, doing laundry, taking a bath etc. but nobody looks at that (yet).

lest the unwashed masses have control over their own possessions. life is great now that a private company can control our entire lives.

@@dogmeat7486 buy solar panels, problem solved

By spicing into the power lines coming into your house, better not let the power company see it though, and if they see u drawing no power for a long time they might start to get suspicious

Not much, it's a fairly simple device, nothing 'high tech' about it, perhaps something like $15-20 per unit total cost.

benefits to home owner: 1: I’m not bothered by someone coming onto my property. 2: Utility company gets updated on who doesn’t have power during outages. Thus allowing them to get the grid up and running a lot faster 3: 100% accuracy, so I know I’m Paying what I owe. Old mechanical meters lost there accuracy a lot faster

If you got money for the newspaper (who still buys those?...) and candles you have money to pay your bills...

And they already are

Time to take your meds again buddy.

@@someguy4915 It figures you would beleve something like that. As an engineer for 40+ years know the technology, and all you need to do is take the wool off and look at all the facts, not mine. Even the power companies ane the green people have said that is their plan to control our carbon foot print.

@@richardhendel8132 I didn't say what if anything I believe, just that you should take your medication. Funny how all you're doing is projecting onto me, some conspiracy theory on how 'big power' is going to control the world xD Also funny how you say 'they are gonna control energy' because they said they want to reduce carbon footprint... That is the same as saying I want to take over the world because I like to eat bread. It shows a serious disconnect within your logic, signalling that you're suffering from psychosis or some other delusion, thus it's time for your anti-psychotic medication buddy.

@@someguy4915 I can see there is no point in trying to have a useful conversation. You seem to take facts as conspiracy theory. I nearly pointed out that the technology is in place to use control this remotely, either by your phone or by the main office. I know the technology and what it can do, I worked on it.

@@richardhendel8132 Lol you aren't trying to have a useful conversation, you're just making random statements and claiming some connection between them. Funny how you went from a 40+ year engineer to being an electrical engineer, programmer, electrician and system administrator all in one comment. If 'big gov' or 'big power/electric' wants to turn off electricity they can already do so from the source, that would instantly drop millions into the dark, much more effective than turning millions of meters off... Why would there by a conspiracy to turn off power to houses? Who would gain anything from that? This is what I meant, you are talking about a conspiracy, some nonsensical rambling. Take those meds buddy.

Not possible unless you know to scan proprietary RF and then decipher their encryption and then reprogram the meter which then it wouldn't work on the network with their program with your code and then they would just replace it with a new one.

It’s been done. Simple computer hack to the meter

Because you don't like them or why?

Ours was forced on by our utility company ever since we went solar. The utility company wouldn't allow our solar company to turn it on unless they had thier "smart solar meter" installed.. It is also the only option they had available.

PG&E gave out two options; 1. They install a smart meter. 2 They charge you a service fee every month to have someone come out and read your meter.

@@justindavis1546 I'd pay the fee. That's how they lure most people in. They create a perceived benefit. California is the first state that would weaponize this, though they're behind Europe. Once they get enough people on these, they won't have to ask you to not use too much power during certain hours. They can just stop service or implement surge pricing if you are.

I've been a customer of 4 different electric utilities in 2 states and all of them don't even give you a choice. If you don't already have a smart meter, they will just come onto your property and install it.

You don’t own the meter on your home. If you don’t like it, start generating your own power and STFU

Go off grid and see how you like that....

Make your own power through solar cells; boycott big energy utility corporates.

they will be deciding alot more soon, depending on who you vote for, what injections you take, how you speak and then how you think.

4G cellular. The same network that your cellphone uses. They sometimes also have local connectivity (usually Zigbee) to talk to other smart meters in the area, or read by a device in a moving vehicle.

Their jobs were probably destroyed by people like me😅

@@projectmoonlight7413 do you make circuit boards?

I remember seeing a reader take the measurements at my grandma's house. They got binoculars and a portable resit printer

@@TheNamesArif well hey praise the lord!!

They have been laid off in most part. The utility keeps a few around for people who choose to pay extra to keep the radios in their meters off and for meters that have a hard time communicating.

It'd honestly be pretty hard being that these meters are made by private companies.

@@LugW0rm Facebook and Twitter didn't work with the government to censor the public about the Chinese Flu