new digital electric meters

[mini-mota]

The city where I live recently replaced our antiquated mechanical electric meter with a new digital, radio controlled model. They have been making these replacements throughout the city as part of an "efficiency improvement." The worker who changed out my meter told me that the device is read via satellite. I did not ask him at the time how often it was read or what data was transmitted besides the overall kW used. I've thought about calling the power company but they always ask you for your personal info before answering any ?'s.

The reason this change concerns me is that I wonder if the utility company can now tell if/when I use an 18/6 or 12/12 schedule growing indoors. I am not really worried about overall power usage since I only plan on micro grows. So, I not only wonder if the utility company reads the pattern of our daily power usage, but also if they report that info to LEO.

Anyone have any knowledge of these meters and how often they are read?

 

[whodi]

sure they can tell schedule... but they usually go by how much total kwh a month regardless of schedule.

fuckem?

 

[wintermute]

Welcome to Smart Meters!

Welcome to Smart Meters!

The city where I live recently replaced our antiquated mechanical electric meter with a new digital, radio controlled model. ...

The reason this change concerns me is that I wonder if the utility company can now tell if/when I use an 18/6 or 12/12 schedule growing indoors. I am not really worried about overall power usage since I only plan on micro grows. So, I not only wonder if the utility company reads the pattern of our daily power usage, but also if they report that info to LEO.

Anyone have any knowledge of these meters and how often they are read?

They don't use satellites but wireless to backhaul data to their base stations and then into the billing databases. The wireless connection is typically point to point or periodically read via truck mounted devices. If they are still working out kinks they may come and read the raw usage monthly in person, like usual.

As for detecting your grow schedule, yes they can do that. If you are not being stupid they should never care and LEO should not be able to data mine for fishing expeditions either. That said, if you fall under scrutiny and your records are released the fine grained smart meter data is definitely going to indicate lighting schedule and amount of gear unless you have an insanely expensive power storage system setup to drive short / intermittent peak loads on the grid that look innocuous while supplying a steady power rate to your grow op.

You can google for "smart grid security" to learn all about the details. This is what I wrote in another thread on the subject:

Here is what concerns me most about the smart grid meters being deployed all over the place. Almost all of them use wireless data transmission to upstream aggregation towers. They support power usage monitoring at 5 minute intervals (even if usually set at 1 hr).

The "security" of these systems is provided by using licensed FCC spectrum. READ: there is no privacy!

FlexNet capable meters (or any similar tech) allows arbitrary people within range to observe your power usage. Regardless of how the "expectation of privacy" plays out for AMR/AMI wireless transmissions the ease and availability of tools for monitoring this data on a large scale completely passively anywhere in the vicinity is scary. It will be abused.

An example: the Sensus meters deployed all over the US. They store usage data for 30-90 days or more, so being present when a transmission is sent is not a requisite. They use 900Mhz band, which is trivial to access via software defined radio and covers long distance / non-line of sight. They are remotely programmable (but this is an active attack, not passive.). They use a standard data format that is easy to decode (ANSI C12.19). They even have truck mounted devices for reading meter data (all 30-90+ days) along a block as you drive through it.

The only bright side is that in theory you could leverage the sampling rate and programmability of the smart meter to "fix" your apparent power usage to whatever you deem fit. You would have to be a hacker to do this right, otherwise you get caught and charged with stealing power on top of whatever else...

 

[SOTF420]

LED lights and Autoflowering strains (24 hours on) solve the "light schedule" and huge power consumption worries. We are seriously already 2 steps ahead.

 

[wintermute]

Tech details

Tech details

mini-mota asked for some tech specs. See attached documents. The first is a promotional spec for the Sensus FlexNet devices. The second is for the optical junction controller (not wireless) which communicates with the IR serial port on the front of the devices. (You then communicate with this device mounted on the front of the meter using a handheld PDA and Bluetooth)

 

[mini-mota]

Thanks all for the responses. Special thanks to wintermute for finding and linking the data. Nice job ;-)

 

[ilovethewest]

a flip flop system might solve your issue. divide your flowering room in half. then build a flip flop box, it switches power from one place to another, and set it to 12 hours. that way you leave the ballasts on 24hrs, but flip the power between 2 rooms, making it look like your using a much steadier stream of power. also you use 1/2 as many ballasts, but get 2x the crop space permitting.

 

[DIGITALHIPPY]

LED lights and Autoflowering strains (24 hours on) solve the "light schedule" and huge power consumption worries. We are seriously already 2 steps ahead.

thats like trading your hummer for a honda civic and still expect to towe that 5th wheel.

leds might still prove themselves, but auto-flowers? why pay for 24 hours of light?

we still are 2 steps ahead,do a flip-flop.

 

[SOTF420]

You should see the huge towers of nugs my buddy grows under the new lumigrow led lights they are insane and so damn dense and frosty. He has to keep it small because it's a personal medical grow but he gets monster buds using minimum power, the lights do use up to 8 amps which is more than is advertised but since the heat is so low there is not really cooling cost & exhaust issues, etc so it's a big savings electricity wise.

Hummers suck anyways, at least the ones I am used to getting! lol

As far as autoflowers go, it would be nice to not have to have the dark cycle that can be tracked by power companies if you are not legal. Constant flowering with no down time or veg time makes alot of sense.

 

[Strainhunter]

a flip flop system might solve your issue. divide your flowering room in half. then build a flip flop box, it switches power from one place to another, and set it to 12 hours. that way you leave the ballasts on 24hrs, but flip the power between 2 rooms, making it look like your using a much steadier stream of power. also you use 1/2 as many ballasts, but get 2x the crop space permitting.

So...you're flowering your plants only then!? (no vegging?!

 

[Twisted Metal]

So...you're flowering your plants only then!? (no vegging?!

I think he meant that auto flowering strains need 24hrs of light for lets say 60days from start to finish. Its still less power doing it the normal way, so in turn its not worth it. IMO AF strains are for noobies and lazy people. Edit i must be high, i thought your quoted Digi post

 

[Barnt]

I just learned a little bit about these new meters. The electric company can and more than likely charges higher rates during the day (peak hours) vs night times. Meaning it would be especially important to try to have light on during the night time. Here in CA it can go from .29cent/KwH in the summer peak to .07cents/KwH at night. Thats a big difference when the bill comes out.

 

[Strainhunter]

Man...some of you just talk out of their...

Here, this is how your electricity usage looks like in display mode if and when you have a smart meter:

 

[ilovethewest]

no, its 2 flowering rooms flipflopping, a cloning gig, and a veging gig. im not currently running that, but next run im hoping to give it a try, maybe that way i can afford a 3 ton ac this summer.

 

[Lazyman]

I don't think a flip solves larger ops problems. What on earth could you be using that is on 24X7 that draws thousands and thousands of watts? Even a 4K constant draw would be suspicious to me. Maybe you could tell em it was a dozen webservers?

 

[~fvk~]

Maybe a hot tub with both the heater and pump being run at 24/0 combined with some high power servers? I really don't know how you could explain that kind of usage in an apartment, but anyone in one looking to run 4k alone should definitely be on flips. Especially if they have a power meter, but that's just my opinion.

Either way, you gotta admit, a 4k constant draw looks a hell of a lot better than 8k with 12/12 spikes. I'm pretty sure the common person that would be scouring your usage for the signs of a grow doesn't know a damn thing about DDPT relays, so I'd say we definitely still have that advantage. The grows with the high energy consumption and the blatantly obvious usage patterns would most likely be the ones getting looked into, but who really knows how this is all going to play out in the long run?

All I know is, for the growers using higher wattages, power meters are a threat that should not be taken for granted.