Smart Meters - electricity

[Salty]

They finished in about 15 minutes - only leaving behind the reading off of the old meter. The installer - not a TEPCO employee, said that it is a DOCOMO (NTT?) signal like a cell phone, and not WIFI. And if I wanted to know more - to look for a TEPCO internet site.

[Russell]

But you guys are in Japan, so the native efficiency should ensure you don't have to go through that. They're very advanced technologically, you know.

And I don't live in an apartment anymore, so that helps to avoid mix ups.

[Tsuru]

Has anyone considered the fact that somewhere in the fine print these smart meters don't substract any excess power generated by the home (solar) that is returned to the grid? This does work with the old-fashioned rotary meter. With solar power becoming more and more popular even in Japan, this creates another incentive for power companies to push smart meters.

All good and well if they can charge you for the power they deliver to your home, but obviously they can't have you substracting any you generate yourself from the bill. Power which is given to them for free, and which they then sell to other customers through their respective meters.

[Wage Slave]

Has anyone considered the fact that somewhere in the fine print these smart meters don't substract any excess power generated by the home (solar) that is returned to the grid? This does work with the old-fashioned rotary meter. With solar power becoming more and more popular even in Japan, this creates another incentive for power companies to push smart meters.

All good and well if they can charge you for the power they deliver to your home, but obviously they can't have you substracting any you generate yourself from the bill. Power which is given to them for free, and which they then sell to other customers through their respective meters.

Are you sure? That sounds very dubious. Much as they hate it, understandably it must be said, the power companies are compelled to buy solar power at well over the price they can sell it for.

[Tsuru]

Wake up and smell the coffee.... Many people are up in arms and refusing smart meters for this reason in Europe.

[Coligny]

[citation needed]

[Tsuru]

The fact that power companies are bastards needs a citation?

The primary concern for anyone installing solar over here is "can your meter back up?" If yes: good, keep it at least until 2020. If no: haha you dun got shafted

Google is your friend.

[Wage Slave]

Don't believe it. But if you have a link I'm all ears.

[Tsuru]

It depends on a lot of things, first and foremost legislation, and of course which company you are with and the exact type of meter they want to install. Since most people on here can't read Dutch or German I'm not going to bore you with stuff which doesn't apply to Japan anyway, but my point is: check the fine print, caveat emptor, etc. I'm merely pointing out our experience with smart meters on the old continent. The overarching thought over here is: if you have a meter which can back up, refuse replacement as long as possible, as until at least 2020 you are under no obligation to have it replaced.

[Russell]

It depends on a lot of things, first and foremost legislation, and of course which company you are with and the exact type of meter they want to install. Since most people on here can't read Dutch or German I'm not going to bore you with stuff which doesn't apply to Japan anyway, but my point is: check the fine print, caveat emptor, etc. I'm merely pointing out our experience with smart meters on the old continent. The overarching thought over here is: if you have a meter which can back up, refuse replacement as long as possible, as until at least 2020 you are under no obligation to have it replaced.

Does 2020 apply to the Netherlands?

How is that related to Japan?

The guys replacing one of my meters told me that every 10 years it should be replaced. The fact that he did not do the other meter adds to his credibility, since he (or: Kansai Electric) was apparently not in a rush.

[wagyl]

Since most people on here can't read Dutch or German I'm not going to bore you with stuff which doesn't apply to Japan anyway,

Sometimes I wonder if many of the people here can read English but that doesn't stop me linking.

As you say it may be very dependent on locality. Since the rates paid for electricity in and solar generated electricity out in this country are different, as indeed are the rates for hydro generated electricity and wind generated electricity different again, my understanding is that there are at least two meters with different polarity, one measuring in and recording time of day (as the rates inwards are different by time as well) and the other recording electricity being returned to the grid. In that case, a meter with a reverse function will be insufficient for proper payment of power sold by you to the grid.

[Salty]

Since the cost of electricity that you buy is less than the price you obtain when you sell, one should never consume what they produce – but rather sell it all.

[Russell]

Since most people on here can't read Dutch or German I'm not going to bore you with stuff which doesn't apply to Japan anyway,

Sometimes I wonder if many of the people here can read English but that doesn't stop me linking.

As you say it may be very dependent on locality. Since the rates paid for electricity in and solar generated electricity out in this country are different, as indeed are the rates for hydro generated electricity and wind generated electricity different again, my understanding is that there are at least two meters with different polarity, one measuring in and recording time of day (as the rates inwards are different by time as well) and the other recording electricity being returned to the grid. In that case, a meter with a reverse function will be insufficient for proper payment of power sold by you to the grid.

Anyway, I doubt that solar power delivered to the net is accounted for by the reverse-rotation of the meter, because the rates for buying power and selling it are different.

[wagyl]

Since most people on here can't read Dutch or German I'm not going to bore you with stuff which doesn't apply to Japan anyway,

Sometimes I wonder if many of the people here can read English but that doesn't stop me linking.

As you say it may be very dependent on locality. Since the rates paid for electricity in and solar generated electricity out in this country are different, as indeed are the rates for hydro generated electricity and wind generated electricity different again, my understanding is that there are at least two meters with different polarity, one measuring in and recording time of day (as the rates inwards are different by time as well) and the other recording electricity being returned to the grid. In that case, a meter with a reverse function will be insufficient for proper payment of power sold by you to the grid.

Anyway, I doubt that solar power delivered to the net is accounted for by the reverse-rotation of the meter, because the rates for buying power and selling it are different.

See what I mean about not reading English...
(apologies to Russell if I am holding him to too strict reading of his English and his understanding of the nuance of "Anyway,")

[Tsuru]

Anyway, I doubt that solar power delivered to the net is accounted for by the reverse-rotation of the meter, because the rates for buying power and selling it are different.

It most definitely is in our case.

It depends on a lot of things, first and foremost legislation, and of course which company you are with and the exact type of meter they want to install. Since most people on here can't read Dutch or German I'm not going to bore you with stuff which doesn't apply to Japan anyway, but my point is: check the fine print, caveat emptor, etc. I'm merely pointing out our experience with smart meters on the old continent. The overarching thought over here is: if you have a meter which can back up, refuse replacement as long as possible, as until at least 2020 you are under no obligation to have it replaced.

Does 2020 apply to the Netherlands?

How is that related to Japan?

It doesn't relate to Japan, which is exactly what I wrote in the post you quoted.

Anyway, you guys seem to have it covered. It never hurts to be sure, as we seem to get shafted at every turn. Gone are the days where you could look at technological progress as a 100% positive thing.

[Russell]

Since most people on here can't read Dutch or German I'm not going to bore you with stuff which doesn't apply to Japan anyway,

Sometimes I wonder if many of the people here can read English but that doesn't stop me linking.

As you say it may be very dependent on locality. Since the rates paid for electricity in and solar generated electricity out in this country are different, as indeed are the rates for hydro generated electricity and wind generated electricity different again, my understanding is that there are at least two meters with different polarity, one measuring in and recording time of day (as the rates inwards are different by time as well) and the other recording electricity being returned to the grid. In that case, a meter with a reverse function will be insufficient for proper payment of power sold by you to the grid.

Anyway, I doubt that solar power delivered to the net is accounted for by the reverse-rotation of the meter, because the rates for buying power and selling it are different.

See what I mean about not reading English...
(apologies to Russell if I am holding him to too strict reading of his English and his understanding of the nuance of "Anyway,")

My reading is usually speed-reading, especially if the text is more than four lines.

So yeah, I missed that one.

Now, have you considered shortening your writing without cutting out contents?

[Russell]

Anyway, I doubt that solar power delivered to the net is accounted for by the reverse-rotation of the meter, because the rates for buying power and selling it are different.

It most definitely is in our case.

It depends on a lot of things, first and foremost legislation, and of course which company you are with and the exact type of meter they want to install. Since most people on here can't read Dutch or German I'm not going to bore you with stuff which doesn't apply to Japan anyway, but my point is: check the fine print, caveat emptor, etc. I'm merely pointing out our experience with smart meters on the old continent. The overarching thought over here is: if you have a meter which can back up, refuse replacement as long as possible, as until at least 2020 you are under no obligation to have it replaced.

Does 2020 apply to the Netherlands?

How is that related to Japan?

It doesn't, which is exactly what I wrote in the post you quoted.

Anyway, you guys seem to have it covered. It never hurts to be sure, as we seem to get shafted at every turn. Gone are the days where you could look at technological progress as a 100% positive thing.

I do think there is something very Dutch in all those shenanigans.

It kind of reminds me of the time I made an online reservation for the Fyra (the Dutch Shinkansen).

When I arrived at Schiphol airport it was announced that all services were suspended for the weekend, which meant that my two-way reservation was useless. Reason: they had to do maintenance on the tracks. (try to come with that in Japan)

Now I wanted to get a refund. For that I had to send a letter by snail mail with a request, and online was not possible, even though I reserved online. And I would not get refunded for the credit card fee. Since it was less than 20 Euro (I thought I had a good deal), I just didn't waste my time with it.

But it all got me in a celebratory mood when they went bankrupt a couple of years later.

[wagyl]

Now, have you considered shortening your writing without cutting out contents?

Whenever I (or anyone else, for that matter) write twitter style, the message is missing important information which always ends up being the cause of a much longer conversation to finally establish what everyone meant to say in the first place. The natural tendency for the internet to make you sound angry and to get angry as a result is not helped by the longer conversation.

I'm really sorry if your reading capacity is the first four lines of a five line post, and if that five line post is too long for you.

I will admit to having a tendency for complex sentences (with far too many parenthetical comments in them) and this is, I think, something that happened with exposure to Japanese sentence construction. I actually do that to try to keep my posts shorter. But anyway, I know you haven't got this far down my post so I will stop here.

[wagyl]

Fyra (the Dutch Shinkansen).

You know you are in trouble when ALDI head office formally object to the popular nickname ALDI-trein.

[Tsuru]

Fyra (the Dutch Shinkansen).

You know you are in trouble when ALDI head office formally object to the popular nickname ALDI-trein.

11 billion lost to mismanagement and incompetence, and still nothing to show for it. F35, Fyra, ABN-AMRO, government IT, health insurance reform, higher education reforms... I don't think there is any example of something major that was done in this country during the last 15 years which was not a complete and utter pile of shit that made a few people a bit richer and fucked op everything for anyone else well into the next few decades.

We should just scuttle The Hague in the North Sea and join Germany. Can someone press the reset button?

[yanpa]

We should just scuttle The Hague in the North Sea and join Germany.

There's a queue at the Austrian border for that.

F35, Fyra, ABN-AMRO, government IT, health insurance reform, higher education reforms...

Swap those first three specifics and you're describing pretty much any major economy... Which reminds me, when's the opening of Berlin's shiny new airport (first planned a quarter of a century ago) going to be rescheduled again?

[Russell]

Fyra (the Dutch Shinkansen).

You know you are in trouble when ALDI head office formally object to the popular nickname ALDI-trein.

11 billion lost to mismanagement and incompetence, and still nothing to show for it. F35, Fyra, ABN-AMRO, government IT, health insurance reform, higher education reforms... I don't think there is any example of something major that was done in this country during the last 15 years which was not a complete and utter pile of shit that made a few people a bit richer and fucked op everything for anyone else well into the next few decades.

Well, at least they had the clearness of mind not to build that monorail from Germany to the North.

But yeah, and we ain't even talking about that passport fiasco. Or are you that young that you don't remember that? Or that public transport card (OV jaarkaart). Or those recently built coal plants that they now want to close because of CO2.

How about joining Denmark?

[Russell]

Now, have you considered shortening your writing without cutting out contents?

Whenever I (or anyone else, for that matter) write twitter style, the message is missing important information which always ends up being the cause of a much longer conversation to finally establish what everyone meant to say in the first place. The natural tendency for the internet to make you sound angry and to get angry as a result is not helped by the longer conversation.

I'm really sorry if your reading capacity is the first four lines of a five line post, and if that five line post is too long for you.

I will admit to having a tendency for complex sentences (with far too many parenthetical comments in them) and this is, I think, something that happened with exposure to Japanese sentence construction. I actually do that to try to keep my posts shorter. But anyway, I know you haven't got this far down my post so I will stop here.

Anyways...

OK, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. This is a forum after all, not a literature contest.

It is just that I am such a big fan of Strunk and White.

[wagyl]

Anyways...

OK, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. This is a forum after all, not a literature contest.

It is just that I am such a big fan of Strunk and White.

For my education, when you have the time, go for your life with your red pen to show what I should have cut from the problem post.

Sometimes I wonder if many of the people here can read English but that doesn't stop me linking.

As you say it may be very dependent on locality. Since the rates paid for electricity in and solar generated electricity out in this country are different, as indeed are the rates for hydro generated electricity and wind generated electricity different again, my understanding is that there are at least two meters with different polarity, one measuring in and recording time of day (as the rates inwards are different by time as well) and the other recording electricity being returned to the grid. In that case, a meter with a reverse function will be insufficient for proper payment of power sold by you to the grid.

I could have removed the half-line meandering tangent about hydro and wind generation, but that is about all I think. If you have other pointers, I am interested to hear. Of course, you managed it in one line but I would say that you could manage that because you piggybacked on the background in my post.

[Wage Slave]

Strunk and White - Worth reading this.

http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497

and far better:

http://www.amazon.com/Sense-Style-Thinking-Persons-Writing/dp/0143127799/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

[Coligny]

F35, Fyra, ABN-AMRO, government IT, health insurance reform, higher education reforms...

Swap those first three specifics and you're describing pretty much any major economy... Which reminds me, when's the opening of Berlin's shiny new airport (first planned a quarter of a century ago) going to be rescheduled again?

Don't remember major fuck ups lately in the Hexagone...
Last week for the "thanksgiving discount" on the helicarriers with free container of smallpox blankies...

[Russell]

Strunk and White - Worth reading this.

http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497

and far better:

http://www.amazon.com/Sense-Style-Thinking-Persons-Writing/dp/0143127799/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

For (hard) scientists and engineers Strunk and White is perfect, because they tend to be lousy writers.

For people having higher ambitions in writing, it is better to leave it to their talents.

[Russell]

Anyways...

OK, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. This is a forum after all, not a literature contest.

It is just that I am such a big fan of Strunk and White.

For my education, when you have the time, go for your life with your red pen to show what I should have cut from the problem post.

Sometimes I wonder if many of the people here can read English but that doesn't stop me linking.

As you say it may be very dependent on locality. Since the rates paid for electricity in and solar generated electricity out in this country are different, as indeed are the rates for hydro generated electricity and wind generated electricity different again, my understanding is that there are at least two meters with different polarity, one measuring in and recording time of day (as the rates inwards are different by time as well) and the other recording electricity being returned to the grid. In that case, a meter with a reverse function will be insufficient for proper payment of power sold by you to the grid.

I could have removed the half-line meandering tangent about hydro and wind generation, but that is about all I think. If you have other pointers, I am interested to hear. Of course, you managed it in one line but I would say that you could manage that because you piggybacked on the background in my post.

Ouch, what did I get myself into. Let me sleep a night over it.

Just one indication why I didn't get your point the first time: I read the first two lines of the paragraph, because I assumed that was the key point being made. The following lines would give more details, but are basically supplementary, so I skipped those. Unfortunately, they contained the main information.

Of course, Japanese writing is different. It tends to first give the background, and then build up to a climax later in the paragraph. That climax should come at the end (I guess), but that does not always happen...

[Coligny]

Fuck you all.
Tomorrow we switch the official language of this forum to French ruled by the 1835 edition of the Academie dictionnary.
Once everyone realise that it's between futile and impossible as an endeavour, we can stop looking at the finger and instead look at the moon toward which it is pointing...

[wagyl]

Anyways...

OK, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. This is a forum after all, not a literature contest.

It is just that I am such a big fan of Strunk and White.

For my education, when you have the time, go for your life with your red pen to show what I should have cut from the problem post.

Sometimes I wonder if many of the people here can read English but that doesn't stop me linking.

As you say it may be very dependent on locality. Since the rates paid for electricity in and solar generated electricity out in this country are different, as indeed are the rates for hydro generated electricity and wind generated electricity different again, my understanding is that there are at least two meters with different polarity, one measuring in and recording time of day (as the rates inwards are different by time as well) and the other recording electricity being returned to the grid. In that case, a meter with a reverse function will be insufficient for proper payment of power sold by you to the grid.

I could have removed the half-line meandering tangent about hydro and wind generation, but that is about all I think. If you have other pointers, I am interested to hear. Of course, you managed it in one line but I would say that you could manage that because you piggybacked on the background in my post.

Ouch, what did I get myself into. Let me sleep a night over it.

Just one indication why I didn't get your point the first time: I read the first two lines of the paragraph, because I assumed that was the key point being made. The following lines would give more details, but are basically supplementary, so I skipped those. Unfortunately, they contained the main information.

Of course, Japanese writing is different. It tends to first give the background, and then build up to a climax later in the paragraph. That climax should come at the end (I guess), but that does not always happen...

OK. I would have satisfied both your expectations and the expectations of the internet if I had said

You are an idiot and you are wrong. Reverse won't help because rates are different.

I suppose I could do BBC online one sentence paragraphs.

I do find them annoying, however.

May I suggest that you only quote the portions of text you have read?

That goes for articles quoted as well.

Then we can have fun saying angrily that you haven't read the thread.

We can then also accuse you of selectively quoting to try to unfairly support your own view.