Electric Smart Meters, remote cutoff?

[jimvm]

A electrical engineer friend of mine says it is just not true that a smart electric
meter can disconnect the electricity to your house. A truck roll by the utility
is necessary.

Think about it, you would have to open a 100 Amp circuit, there are no relays
or scr's that size inside the meter.

Makes sense to me, what do you know?

jim vm

 

[K4IHS]

Sounds like you already have it figured out! My community has all smart meters... and when I monitor their radio comms I constantly hear units being dispatched to turn on/off for nonpays.

 

[davidgcet]

there are some setup to kill power to HVAC/water heaters during peak demand, so i am sure they CAN be configured for the whole home as well. that being said, all the smart meters i have seen around here they still send a man out to physically pull the meter to cut power when you don't pay!

 

[K4IHS]

davidgcet: You are right. I didn't think about those. I have them near my AC and another near my hot water tank with little LEDs on them to tell when they are working. The units are small and the wiring that goes to them is small... only slightly larger then telephone cable.

 

[iMONITOR]

there are some setup to kill power to HVAC/water heaters during peak demand, so i am sure they CAN be configured for the whole home as well. that being said, all the smart meters i have seen around here they still send a man out to physically pull the meter to cut power when you don't pay!

Those devices do not interrupt the power circuit, they interrupt the low voltage control circuit. This could also be done on a furnace. Not too difficult to by pass however.

 

[kcrom]

There are Remote Disconnect Electric Meters out there

There are several brands of Electric Meters on the market that have a remote disconnect function, which are IP based. A full 200 AMP disconnect relay, under glass. 26 years in the electric meter shop.

 

[davidgcet]

the ones i have seen kill the line voltage, so they make them various ways. i think the low valtage ones might be more prevalent, as they would be easier to install. they don't use them here, so the only ones i have seen personally were some a company was demoing to local POCO using our VHF paging for control.

 

[jimvm]

Power Relays

Thanks ckron. Looks like there might be room inside to house a DPST relay rated at 200 Amps.
The line side could provide holding current, any attempt to remove and reinstall the meter might
restore power for a short time until the radio alerts the utility to tampering, thereby issue of a
remote disconnect. So much talk on radio shows on how smart meters are making people sick,
bees to die and tree leaves dieing. Reading about smart meters on internet mentions the first
roll out of 5,000,000 meters might have the remote disconnect feature disabled.

Monitoring the 900 MHz band with a spectrum analyzer shows my smart meter sends out a packet
almost every minute, my next door neighbors meter is the same signal strength. Lots of other packets
at less strength. There seems to be a master base station on 915.2 MHz that polls the meters or at
least keeps them synch'd.

My interest in smart meters comes from previous radio modems, Ricochet, etc.
Our gas meters use 451.xxxx MHz to send out a packet every few hours, they are powered by a 20 year
battery. There is no remote shutoff for the gas.

For reference => we have PG&E service, northern California. Electric meters are GE with SilverSprings
network. Gas meters are Star Hexagram.

 

[jimvm]

I might have found an answer, never mind!

Re: Money trumps security in smart-meter rollouts, experts say
Unfortunately security weaknesses are real and so are the possible consequences of a break in. I'm not sure what you mean with "proposed smart grid", all networked smart meter deployments are smart grids (admittedly there are again varying definitions of the term, some only consider it a smart grid if it includes sensors and remote controls on the distribution and production side as well as the delivery side).
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While not all smart meters contain disconnect switches, many do. The smart meters installed by PG&E don't have a relay but a motorized disconnect switch. They are not significantly larger than the old electro-mechanical meters they are replacing.
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The smart grid built by PG&E does have a number of safety features that make such an attack more challenging (but certainly not impossible). I hope that anybody smart enough to break into the smart grid is also smart enough to understand the consequences of doing so (and therefore doesn't do it).
--

 

[MtnBiker2005]

Confidential PG&E SmartMeter Presentations - 2008
http://publicintelligence.net/confidential-pge-smartmeter-presentations/

 

[poltergeisty]

All this "smart grid" stuff is just waiting for a hack.

 

[AB4BF]

"Smart" Meters

SCE&G has installed these type of meters for some time now. When they are transmitting, the signal interposes itself on the 450 - 460 MHz range, which is also smack dab middle of my county's LE frequency.
The signal doesnt break the squelch, but makes a "kah-shew kah-shew kah-shew" sound over the voice transmissions. Sometimes gets irritating :twisted:.