I experienced some unusual behaviour of my grid utility meter today.
The supply company's meter is a Landis+Gyr ZCE129AC. It only provides the integral number of units consumed (most of the time). This is not helpful when I'm trying to reset my openergymonitor meter to agree with the utility meter reading.
However today there was a power cut, and after power was restored I noticed that the display of the whole units used alternated with the three decimal digit fractional part. I have no idea why the meter would have switched mode like this, but the better resolution was just what I wanted. Unfortunately, the meter has now reverted to its usual behaviour - only the whole units consumed is displayed.
It seems that the meter can display down to the watt-hour level if it feels like doing so, but most of the time it doesn't want to. It's most frustrating.
Does anyone know what's going on? Perhaps the meter is faulty?
Re: Unusual behaviour of utility meter
My guess is it went into "startup mode", the high resolution being to assure the linesman that it was recording without him having to wait for at least one, possibly more, Units of electricity to be consumed. Then it reverted to "meter reader" mode because most customers don't understand meters and the electricity supplier's Billing Department is not interested in fractional kWh.
[As far as I'm concerned, your comment should have been: "
(most of the time)ALL of the time this is not helpful...]Re: Unusual behaviour of utility meter
Yes, it's a pain waiting for a unit to be consumed. If I want to synchronise my own meter to the supply one I have to stand gazing at the utility meter till it flips to the next unit, though I usually turn the oven and everything on so I don't have to wait so long.
It seems likely the meter could be configured to display the information I need. I'll try contacting the electricity supplier, though I don't have much expectation of success.
Re: Unusual behaviour of utility meter
At the start of each new day, our Nedap inverter displays each Wh of generated energy. After reaching "0.999", the next value to be displayed is "1" and it thereafter only counts up in whole kWh units.
Reducing the resolution in such a drastic manner has always seemed an unhelpful feature. Maybe this behaviour is some kind of an industry standard.
Re: Unusual behaviour of utility meter
Bring back analogue meters with great big rotating disks. At least they provided better resolution, though probably not down to Wh.
Re: Unusual behaviour of utility meter
My understanding is that most such meters can have many programming options, whether the meter owner (who is probably not the supplier) or the supplier itself, will be willing to consider such a request is an entirely different matter.
Re: Unusual behaviour of utility meter
"though probably not down to Wh."
My old (now removed) Landis & Gyr had a 1/10 kWh roller that was subdivided into 10, so the register could be read and recorded to within 10 Wh. So 100 times better than its replacement.
The disk did 187.5 turns per kWh. It had 10 major divisions, each subdivided into 20. I make that 0.533 Wh per major division and 0.0266 Wh, or 96 J per minor division. It was a pity the gearing was such a weird ratio.
Re: Unusual behaviour of utility meter
My water meter has better resolution than my electricity meter