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Author Topic: Electricity Meters  (Read 3383 times)

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Offline kevinb

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Electricity Meters
« on: April 30, 2016, 07:25. »
People in Spain have been fined €1500 for tampering with their elec meters apparently without any real evidence, wonder if opening the cabinet where meters are housed and resetting a trip is considered tampering. With the new smart meters the supplier can remotely cut your power off so a customer could reset the trip and get caught out. Read an article that the new meters have a trip that is rated at your contracted supply, usually 3.5kw, people who have illegally had fitted 5.5kw breakers risk the trip on the meter firing if they go above 3.5kw.I have noticed that the main power switch on the consumer unit in our house on GA is double pole , both live and neutral are switched, thought strange, its because they don't earth the neutral like in the UK so neutral can can have a high voltage above real earth, quite dangerous I would have thought , OK if you have an RCD but on older systems look out.
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Offline Angelo

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« Reply #1 on: April 30, 2016, 08:28. »
Yes, I found that up last week when I turn off the electrics at the main fuse box ,turn off the main switch" I thought that the all house was turned off as is a double switch "as I was connecting the socket I touch the negative with the Earth and I got a bang !!!! And yes was live an tripped the "socket switch "on the board.And yes I am a bit confused about Spanish electric wiring .Moral of the story turn off every thing on the fuse board before you touch  the electricity or you going will have a bang.........
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Offline kevinb

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« Reply #2 on: April 30, 2016, 08:35. »
Nice surprise for you Angelo, reckon the neutral could be around 120v above earth, got shock in the UK once my neighbours house wiring was so old it had no earth, touched his fridge and one of the capacitors somewhere on the compressor discharged through me , had the metal work of the fridge been earthed as normal it wouldn't have found a path through me.
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Offline NickiH

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« Reply #3 on: April 30, 2016, 12:59. »
Are they updating all the electric meters or do you have to request a smart meter?
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Offline John H

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« Reply #4 on: April 30, 2016, 13:03. »
They are updating all meters, they are all being replaced with smart meters


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Offline Alicante Holiday Villas

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« Reply #5 on: April 30, 2016, 19:25. »
The alarm is ONLY set off when someone tries to break the seal on the meter - not just by re-setting  8)
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Offline mikehoward

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« Reply #6 on: May 04, 2016, 11:25. »
Hi,

Altomar 1, is now on smart meters it was upgraded whilst we were away and there was no impact. I can confirm ( we did it twice) that as long as you don't have an illegal upgrade the trip inside the house will go, not the one in the meter box. Before you ask we will continue with our 3.5KW as to upgrade will increase our electricity costs by 25%, due to the higher daily charge, add in the extra unit charge and I estimate 30-40% plus. Just for the luxury of being able to switch on multiple items, that said we don't have aircon and have a gas cooker.
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Offline John H

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« Reply #7 on: May 05, 2016, 19:54. »
Just looking at my last two electric bills our new meter was fitted on the 12th February. We are on Novamar 5

The bill period 28th Dec to 25th Feb is split into two parts and shows the date when the the new meter was fitted.

We didnt visit the house in this period, the consumption as you would expect is 0 KWh

We were at the house in March and didnt even know the new meter had been fitted.

We are on 5.5 Kw capacity and its very rare that we trip the electric through over consumption, although before we had aircon fitted and relied on electric convector heaters for winter heat it tripped regularly...........shows how little power the invertor air con uses

Regards all

John

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Offline kevinb

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« Reply #8 on: May 05, 2016, 22:32. »
Evening John , my air con takes 900 watts for 3kw of heating and less for cooling, the inverter units slow the compressor down as the room reaches optimum temperature which results in lower power consumption, impressed with ours so far.
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Offline John H

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« Reply #9 on: May 05, 2016, 22:45. »
Hi Kevin, we have a Panasonic Inverter in the lounge and it's super, the only problem is it makes the Mrs eyes itch!!
We've got a Carrier Inverter in our bedroom, pop it on for 30 mins before retiring and it's lovely and warm.
The electric bills using the aircon are much lower than when we used convector heaters
Hope the backs feeling better

Regards all

John


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Offline kevinb

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« Reply #10 on: May 07, 2016, 18:19. »
Hi John , As usual when in GA my health improves and aches and pains recede, done a lot of walking over last few days with binoculars looking at the local birds (feathered I might add)

Cheers KeV
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