Magnet slows your smart electric meter or blocks signal

[leded]

is this possible with a magnet and a smart meter ??
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgKQihUEFA0

 

[mmckenna]

A small magnet like he had will not block a radio signal. If it was true, the earths own magnetic field would make things pretty impossible.

It might cause issues with how an electric meter determines the amount of electricity flowing from the utility into a home. The problem with that is you would be effectively defrauding the electric utility, and that usually falls under "theft of services" which often results in some jail time.

So, watching that painful video made me think the guy needs to take a major chill pill. If he's telling the truth about why the magnet was there, then he just needs to talk (calmly) with someone from the electric utility about what happened and come to some sort of financial agreement with them. While maybe not intentional, his actions did impact the function of the utility company's meter. Many home owners fail to realize that the utility meters do actually belong to the utility.

 

[cmdrwill]

Magnets would affect the older electro mechanical meters with the rotating disk.

Not so on the new meters. But lead foil would block the RF.

 

[n5ims]

Blocking the RF would accomplish what exactly? Stop the company from billing you? No, they'll simply notice that they can't read the meter and send out a bill using an estimate of how much you used. Once they can read it again (either remotely or by sending someone by like in the old days), they'll send you a bill for the amount used, adjusted by the amounts they billed by estimate.

They'll also send a crew out to replace the "failed" smart meter and might even charge you for the replacement, especially if the failure was due, in their opinion, to the customer. It's even possible that they might bring civil or criminal charges for tampering with their equipment (there are often laws they push through to allow this).

 

[DJ11DLN]

This myth has been floating around for at least 30 years, that was when I first heard about it. Asked a good friend who has worked for a major electric utility longer than that, he told me to go ahead and stick one on my meter if I wanted, it wouldn't do any good and they usually leave them alone if they're not obscuring the readouts because they don't affect the meter's ability to measure kWh. They use both the spinning-wheel type of meters and the other types where you can't detect any movement, he said the result is the same on either, unless you've got a "scrapyard" type of high-power electromagnet it won't project enough of a field into the works to affect it. Also, when we were still allowed to pull meters at structure fires -- something the utilities get a lot more fired up about than a magnet now -- I've seen them stuck on both the housings and the glass (duct tape etc), obviously having been there for awhile. So the utilities hereabouts at least apparently don't care, leading to my belief that even a powerful rare-earth magnet isn't going to help with your electric bill. Just my 2c.:wink:

As far as a magnet affecting a databurst that is transmitted back over the power lines...not even gonna go there.:roll: