What REC said: was "lost electricity"

[Steve IA]

I'll try to cover this as clearly as possible, answering as many of the
questions that where raised as I can. I spoke at length with 2 reps of
the REC this morning. They were both sympathetic and helpful.

1. They do not estimate. They don't even physically read anymore. Every
27 hours or so each meter sends its progress back to the REC computer
which records this information. At the end of the cycle this data is
turned into a bill.
2. The data from the individual meter reports is available to the
customer in what is called a 'turtle' report. This shows meter reading
and usage for each ~27 hour period. Turtle info: http://tinyurl.com/yo3lcm
3. The REC said they were also surprised that the overall usage didn't
go down more than it did with the outage and all. They could offer no
explanation other than 'it was colder'. They didn't have the actual
Heating Degree Days!! They said they had considered including it on the
bills, but hadn't yet. I found the heating degree days at
www.weather.gov . Click on the map for your location then select
climate/local from the menu on the left side of the screen.
Locally Dec 07 had only 4% more HDD than average, but 31% more than 2006
which was unusually warm. A comparison with last years bill could be
misleading.

4. As I had suspected for some time during this discussion, there was
more than 1 thing going on, which clouded the issue:
a) the colder than last years temperatures which would increase usage
across all customers,despite the outage and (drum roll please)
b) My 'turtle' report showed I had days of increased usage starting Nov
23 and ending about Dec 23. Every day in this period was higher than my
22kwh/day 6-year average and some were 2X that average (44,48,49)!!!
Before 11/23 and after 12/23 and continuing until today, my usage has
been normal average.
Recap:
Oct 25 - Nov 22. Normal usage: 13-22 kwh/day 408kwh/28days=14.6kwh/day
Nov 23 - Dec 11. Extreme usage: 28-49 kwh/day 574/19 =30.1
Dec 11 - Dec 17. No usage: power outage 0
Dec 18 - Dec 23. Extreme usage: 28-44 kwh/day 163/6 = 27.2
Dec 24 - Jan 21. Normal usage: 16-33 kwh/day 612/29 = 21.1

For some reason, which I'll probably never find out, we used an unusual
amount of electricity for nearly a month, interrupted, luckily, but the
power outage. Whatever the draw, it went away and as far as I know it
went on its own.

I plan to monitor my meter closely if not daily for a while.

Other answers:
The REC said they had many neutral lines down yet and they were
repairing them as the could, thus the 1 line vs. 2 line question.

Thanks for all the support and kind helpful input.
If I figure more out, I'll let you know.
If you have more comments/questions, fire away

Steve

--
"But every time I read the papers
That old feeling comes on.
We're waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on."

-Pete Seeger

 

[Elmo]

Steve IA said (on or about) 01/21/2008 17:34:

I'll try to cover this as clearly as possible, answering as many of the
questions that where raised as I can. I spoke at length with 2 reps of
the REC this morning. They were both sympathetic and helpful.

1. They do not estimate. They don't even physically read anymore. Every
27 hours or so each meter sends its progress back to the REC computer
which records this information. At the end of the cycle this data is
turned into a bill.
2. The data from the individual meter reports is available to the
customer in what is called a 'turtle' report. This shows meter reading
and usage for each ~27 hour period. Turtle info: http://tinyurl.com/yo3lcm
3. The REC said they were also surprised that the overall usage didn't
go down more than it did with the outage and all. They could offer no
explanation other than 'it was colder'. They didn't have the actual
Heating Degree Days!! They said they had considered including it on the
bills, but hadn't yet. I found the heating degree days at
www.weather.gov . Click on the map for your location then select
climate/local from the menu on the left side of the screen.
Locally Dec 07 had only 4% more HDD than average, but 31% more than 2006
which was unusually warm. A comparison with last years bill could be
misleading.

4. As I had suspected for some time during this discussion, there was
more than 1 thing going on, which clouded the issue:
a) the colder than last years temperatures which would increase usage
across all customers,despite the outage and (drum roll please)
b) My 'turtle' report showed I had days of increased usage starting Nov
23 and ending about Dec 23. Every day in this period was higher than my
22kwh/day 6-year average and some were 2X that average (44,48,49)!!!
Before 11/23 and after 12/23 and continuing until today, my usage has
been normal average.
Recap:
Oct 25 - Nov 22. Normal usage: 13-22 kwh/day 408kwh/28days=14.6kwh/day
Nov 23 - Dec 11. Extreme usage: 28-49 kwh/day 574/19 =30.1
Dec 11 - Dec 17. No usage: power outage 0
Dec 18 - Dec 23. Extreme usage: 28-44 kwh/day 163/6 = 27.2
Dec 24 - Jan 21. Normal usage: 16-33 kwh/day 612/29 = 21.1

For some reason, which I'll probably never find out, we used an unusual
amount of electricity for nearly a month, interrupted, luckily, but the
power outage. Whatever the draw, it went away and as far as I know it
went on its own.

I plan to monitor my meter closely if not daily for a while.

Other answers:
The REC said they had many neutral lines down yet and they were
repairing them as the could, thus the 1 line vs. 2 line question.

Thanks for all the support and kind helpful input.
If I figure more out, I'll let you know.
If you have more comments/questions, fire away

Steve

Way Cool!

I was a participant in a pilot program in which the [deregulated]
electric company that I paid for my electrons put a demand-sensing
inductive loop around the main feed cable as it entered the panel.
The installed a power line networking gateway, a 4 port router (one
port connected to the gateway), and a special thermostat which was
also connected via the power line network and gateway to the Internet.

Their plan was to offer a special rate to customers who agreed to
allow the power company to shed load by raising the thermostat set
point by 2 degrees. That way they could avoid having to buy so much
expensive power during peak periods, pass a little of the savings on
to the customer, and profit from the rest. As a bonus, I could
manipulate my thermostat via the Internet and -- of more interest to
me -- see a demand curve on my house which showed the periods of
highest use and gave me a clue about what I could do to lower my usage
independently. Of course they went out of business.

 

[[email protected]]

If you have more comments/questions, fire away

Steve

To add to what has been said, I would still be concerned about the
mysterious days when power spiked. There is a 90% chance that it is
explainable, but I'll relate what happened when we first moved into
our 1960s house in Florida.

The house had a 150 amp entrance. I didn't give a second thought
about that, since it had obviously worked for over twenty years. It
also had an seven year old heat pump, a pool pump, a sprinkler pump,
lots of incandescent and halogen lighting, an electric dryer,
dishwasher, and some other lesser loads.

During the first summer, I noticed that our electric bill was a lot.
I had no way of being sure why this was the case, so I began poking
around. When I went outside near the meter, I could smell something
hot, like hot electric wire insulation. I then felt the breakers,
which felt a little warm but fine, then moved on to the meter, and
discovered that the conduit leading from the meter box to the breakers
was too hot to touch.

I called in an electrician, and he was able to open things up. The
aluminum wire between the meter and the breaker box had been heated to
a point that it had begun to seriously corrode and add resistance of
its own, and had _almost_ burned away enough insulation between the
wires to create a direct short.

What had happened? The age and type of the wiring was, of course, a
factor, but the issue we had not considered was that during the summer
we might run all of the major power users at the same time. The pool
needed cleaning, it was hot in the house, the lawn was getting dry,
and because we were sweating and drinking lots of water, the laundry
and dishes were being done, all during the late afternoon. The
_cumulative_ draw was enough to damage the connection to the aluminum
wire and the added resistance was overheating both the connection and
wire.

Had I not been sniffing around, we would have had an electrical fire
at a spot where it would be impossible to shut off the current without
either the fire or power department breaking into the transformer box,
and we likely would have had severe damage to the house.

Once the wire was replaced and connections repaired, our power usage
went down by a significant amount.

The moral of the story? Don't let those high power usage days go
unchallenged.

 

[Steve IA]

To add to what has been said, I would still be concerned about the
mysterious days when power spiked. There is a 90% chance that it is
explainable, but I'll relate what happened when we first moved into
our 1960s house in Florida.
snip



The moral of the story? Don't let those high power usage days go
unchallenged.

Thanks for the thoughts. I don't plan to but now that it's gone, it will
be hard to track down. I'll keep my nose to the ground.

Steve
southiowa

 

[M Q]

Neon John wrote:

....

If you're THAT concerned then perhaps you should get one of the several available
instruments that connects to your service and displays on an inside display real-time
usage as well as cumulative stats for the month. Some even have alarms that can be
set to warn you when your rate-of-use exceeds a certain value. And some can send
data to your computer so you can trend data yourself.

Sounds cool. Please give me a link to these devices.

 

[Elmo]

Neon John wrote:

...

Sounds cool. Please give me a link to these devices.

http://www.ccontrolsys.com/products/wnp_for_lon.html

 

[Steve IA]

So you have a self-reading meter. That's nice. If you'd told us that in the first
place it would have saved all of us a lot of time and effort.

If I would have known, I would said so. This wasn't an exercise in
deception on my part.

You suspected? Geez, that's what several of us were trying to hammer into your hard
head!

Well, I've learned to take Usenet stuff with many grains of salt. The
catch-up loads of laundry theory you espoused early on (1/19 5:59pm)
pretty much shot YOUR street cred. How DOES that work? 5 loads every 5th
day uses more electricity than 1 load/day? It's still 5 loads in 5
days. 5=5.

I didn't suspect it at first, I was the victim of occam's razor and
several things happening at once was not the simplest solution. After
some discussion here my suspicions grew, but not until I saw the turtle
report and the HDDs did I become convinced. That's what data has over
opinion and speculation.

In other words, the storm disrupted your normal activities, which is what I said in
my last post in this thread.

Of course it did, I didn't use any electricity. So what? The storm
*didn't* disrupt my normal activities *before* the storm,and only
minimally afterward thanks to a gas generator and wood burning stove. In
fact,the avg.kwh/day *after* the storm was 10% LESS than before the
storm. So much for the catch-up theory. The usage before the storm was
150% of average. (see recap above)

Your last chance, John and I'll type slowly, so please try to keep up.
*My* unusual usage started days before the storm, and continued days
after the restoration of power. One can draw a line on the turtle report
the day it starts and the day it stops.
Can you say "coincidence"?

I'm not sure that'll do much for you since you can call up your turtle report on the
web.

Not to 'Joe consumer'; not at this REC.

If you're THAT concerned then perhaps you should get one of the several available
instruments that connects to your service and displays on an inside display real-time
usage as well as cumulative stats for the month. Some even have alarms that can be
set to warn you when your rate-of-use exceeds a certain value. And some can send
data to your computer so you can trend data yourself.

On 1/19, at 4:50 pm Neon John said:
"One of the most useful things you can do is to read your meter every
day at the same time for some period and look for patterns. "


But feel free to change your mind.
Your input is stimulating if not always correct or consistent.

--
Steve
southiowa

weltschmerz
Pronunciation: 'velt-"shmerts
Function: noun

: mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state
of the world with an ideal state

 

[nick hull]

Your last chance, John and I'll type slowly, so please try to keep up.
*My* unusual usage started days before the storm, and continued days
after the restoration of power. One can draw a line on the turtle report
the day it starts and the day it stops.
Can you say "coincidence"?

Someone left a window cracked open and closed it when the power failed?

Free men own guns - www(dot)geocities(dot)com/CapitolHill/5357/

 

[bud--]

No, the moral is, you just wrote a load of total bullshit.

If you have a high resistance joint anywhere in your supply then total
power consumption will always fall. Hot joints in extension leads
are just the same, you'll loose 3/5 of 5/8 of bugger all in a normal
joint and if its resistance rises you'll loose more but the volts are
dropped across that high resistance joint and therefore the downstream
loads will always use less. If downstream devices use switch mode
supplies (such as computers or tv's) then the consumption of those
devices will stay almost the same

You could have a joint in your supply line that glowed bright red in
daylight and if anything it would reduce the consumption of your
washing machine, dishwasher and fridge, and accordingly reduce the
reading on your electricity meter. If the high resistance joint was
on your side of the meter then, with the exception of switch mode
supplied devices you'd consume the same overall amount of metered
electricity but the high resistance joint would usually waste that
heat.

Induction motors want to run at a constant speed. If the voltage goes
down the current goes up. The speed may drop slightly. If the required
HP goes down rapidly with RPM, like a fan, current could go up or down.
Even if the RPM drop lowered the current, some equipment like a
refrigerator, heat pump or water pump would have to run longer. Series
resistance would usually increase total power consumed by an induction
motor.

 

[bud--]

Sure. Ask him why they fill the transformer with oil and circulate it
then.

Transformers are filled with oil for aluminum, or copper, conductors to
transfer heat to the case, then to the air. High current through
conductors creates a lot of I squared R heat. With conductors tightly
packed together in a transformer winding the heat is difficult to dissipate.

Aluminum conductors evaporate because their resistance increases
exponentially, Copper is not as bad.

Last I heard, at reasonable temperatures the resistance of aluminum,
like that of copper, doesn't significantly change.

Kindly provide a link with information on aluminum conductors evaporating.

I agree with dpb's answer to hallerb - wrong question.

 

[dpb]

Bob F wrote:
....

And electrical heaters would heat less, so they would run longer, increasing
total usage.

Proportionately longer time at lower voltage is still same power...

--

 

[dpb]

Except for the losses where the problem is. Which don't heat the house if
they're outside. Sorry.

But that loss is independent of downstream load...

--

 

[bud--]

But that loss is independent of downstream load...

???
Loss at a series connection resistance ("problem") depends on the
downstream load.

The original statement (Mike) was "If you have a high resistance joint
anywhere in your supply then total power consumption will always fall."

A thermostatically controlled resistance heater will use the same power
at the heater. I agree with Bob that the power consumption will go up
because the power loss at the "problem" adds to the power used at the
heater.

 

[dpb]

???
Loss at a series connection resistance ("problem") depends on the
downstream load.

....

That's true--I knew this was going to come back when I sent it--just
_after_ "Send".

If that really was the claim rather than a resistance heater was going
to use more power at the lower voltage simply by running longer at the
lower input to output the same heating...

--

 

[[email protected]]

No, the moral is, you just wrote a load of total bullshit.

If you have a high resistance joint anywhere in your supply then total
power consumption will always fall. Hot joints in extension leads
are just the same, you'll loose 3/5 of 5/8 of bugger all in a normal
joint and if its resistance rises you'll loose more but the volts are
dropped across that high resistance joint and therefore the downstream
loads will always use less. If downstream devices use switch mode
supplies (such as computers or tv's) then the consumption of those
devices will stay almost the same

You could have a joint in your supply line that glowed bright red in
daylight and if anything it would reduce the consumption of your
washing machine, dishwasher and fridge, and accordingly reduce the
reading on your electricity meter. If the high resistance joint was
on your side of the meter then, with the exception of switch mode
supplied devices you'd consume the same overall amount of metered
electricity but the high resistance joint would usually waste that
heat.

Well, I have another moral, this time in relationship to your idiotic
ASSumptions. Read the post again carefully for comprehension.

I stated:

I was investigating possible causes of my high power bill, and
happened to come across a dangerous situation that required an
immediate remedy. FWIW, I did NOT say that this was the cause of the
increased bill, although it was a contributory factor, as I'll explain
below. I stated that the increased draw from running all the
appliances at the same time was enough to heat the corroded
connections and create the situation where there was danger, and it
was a good thing that I was investigating, since having my house burn
down was a BAD thing.

I suppose that if I had said I found a dead squirrel holding a Kit Kat
bar in the breaker box you would ASSume that I thought it was the
cause for increased power consumption and detail for us how squirrels
don't consume power and don't have the money to buy Kit Kat bars.

Now, to examine your intended point. What you are basically stating
is that the total resistance remains the same when wiring gets hot,
and that the same amount of power is consumed per unit of time. To
put it into layman terms; the theory is that when you connect a 100
watt incandescent light bulb, it doesn't matter if you connect it
directly to meter, or in series with a 5,000 watt heater and then to
the meter, the power coming into the circuit is constant. The light
bulb will still light and the total power used will remain the same.
The light bulb is the limiting device, and it might glow a little less
brightly, and the heater get a little warm, but a meter will record
the same rate of usage.

What you are totally missing is why we buy power in the first place.
We buy it to do work. If my AC is getting less power, it has to work
longer to cool the same space. Since air conditioning is about 1/2 to
3/4 of the total power consumed in the summer, that becomes a
significant issue. If a light burns a little less, or the pool pump
runs a little slower, I might not notice it or bother to compensate
for it. However, the thermostat on the AC compensates automatically,
and the AC runs longer without my doing anything. Therefore, the
power wasted in heating the wiring has to be made up by using an
equivalent amount of power to allow the AC to do its work.

In your bully rush to claim bullshit and plant your flag as a
know-it-all, you managed to fall into your own heaping pile of it.
Shit happens all the time when the ego outruns considered thought.
Think of it as a lesson to slow down your hot responses and mind your
manners.

 

[[email protected]]

Other answers:
The REC said they had many neutral lines down yet and they were
repairing them as the could, thus the 1 line vs. 2 line question.

How can you have power without a neutral?
Impossible !!!!!
You cant just rely on the ground rods.

That alone could make the electronics in your meter go whacky.

 

[You]

How can you have power without a neutral?
Impossible !!!!!
You cant just rely on the ground rods.

That alone could make the electronics in your meter go whacky.

Hmmmm, I would seem that if one were in a USA type Distribution System,
AND one had 120/240 Single Phase, and the Neutral was open, that ALL
the 240 Vac Loads would still work, just Peachie..... Or, if one
had a 240/120 Vac Transformer in their System, again if the Feed Neutral
was open, they would still have 120 Vac at the output of the
Transformer..... Or, if one was feed 3 Phase Delta, no Neutral is
REQUIRED......

Does that meet your Power requirement??? Impossible!!!!! NOT.....

 

[[email protected]]

Forget Stefan-Boltzmann and look at the volts, amps and ohms *that* is
what matters.

Actually, it is a good fire, a cold one, and a suitable wench that
matters.

 

[[email protected]]

A resistive joint, of the magnitude that doesn't set fire to your
house makes bugger all difference to your power consumption.

Clinton already talked about resisting joints. Old news. Re-read my
second post for comprehension. I'm beginning to understand why N-J
tends to be abrupt and abrasive.

If your premise were true, then we would have trolley cars that were
fed 600 vdc and operated fine even 15 miles from the power source.

Tell yah what, big boy. Stick a few 100 watt light bulbs upstream of
your load. You might get illuminated.

 

[grandpa]

If utility companies (worldwide) want to reduce demand they have three
standard approaches - although not all are used in every country.

They either:

1) dynamically constrain demand from commercial users (AC/heating
setpoint changes for instance)

2) drop the volts at the consumers point of service by transformer
tapping at the HV-Distribution voltage transformer

3) block load shed.

A resistive joint upstream of your supply simply drops volts but
doesn't EVER make your local meter turn faster by increasing your
instantaneous power consumption.

A resistive joint, of the magnitude that doesn't set fire to your
house makes bugger all difference to your power consumption.

Hey, anybody know that formula that goes like

P equals I over E or something like that