Whats to stop a malicious meter reader?

[BUTCH1]

Just because a meter is smart doesn't mean it's accurate: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/ct-water-meter-overcharge-met-20150603-story.html

Your link is useless, it brings up a subscription page and if you click "not now" you get thrown to today's homepage.

 

[IronWing]

Your link is useless, it brings up a subscription page and if you click "not now" you get thrown to today's homepage.

Install ad blocker and no script.

 

[stormkroe]

Squirrel, you just reminded me of how confused I was when I first moved to Alberta and a general contractor from out east asked me when the hydro was getting turned on. I was like, uh... I don't know, I'm an electrician, go ask the plumber.
For the record, I still think calling it hydro is stupid

 

[BrokenVisage]

Spider-Man

 

[KLin]

um because the majority of meters are now smart meters.

If you still have a meter reader, you can easily read the KWHs yourself.

fuckin this. OP is a dumbshit.

 

[1sikbITCH]

Install ad blocker and no script.

Confirmed, link is useful.

The way to avoid a malicious meter reader is to opt out of smart readers. Smart Meters are such a great scam that I heard the King of Nigeria massacred a thousand people out of rage because they didn't think of it first. They collect a lot of personal information about you before they rape you on the bill. They can sell that information to marketers and other 3rd parties. But they won't do that; you can trust them ()

Here they installed smart meters but allowed us to opt out for $11.00 a month. So many people opted out that the regulators forced them to cut that fee in half.

 

[BxgJ]

Confirmed, link is useful.

The way to avoid a malicious meter reader is to opt out of smart readers. Smart Meters are such a great scam that I heard the King of Nigeria massacred a thousand people out of rage because they didn't think of it first. They collect a lot of personal information about you before they rape you on the bill. They can sell that information to marketers and other 3rd parties. But they won't do that; you can trust them ()

Here they installed smart meters but allowed us to opt out for $11.00 a month. So many people opted out that the regulators forced them to cut that fee in half.

Hmmm avoid bad meter readers by opting out of the service that avoids meter readers, ensuring a meter reader must read your meter. Ok......

 

[JoeBleed]

Confirmed, link is useful.

The way to avoid a malicious meter reader is to opt out of smart readers. Smart Meters are such a great scam that I heard the King of Nigeria massacred a thousand people out of rage because they didn't think of it first. They collect a lot of personal information about you before they rape you on the bill. They can sell that information to marketers and other 3rd parties. But they won't do that; you can trust them ()

Here they installed smart meters but allowed us to opt out for $11.00 a month. So many people opted out that the regulators forced them to cut that fee in half.

Is it just me or do these links seem awfully loony? and i'm generally paranoid... for what i managed to read of them, they are only so many things they can gleam from your power usage. the detail they suggest doesn't seem possible with out other input to narrow it down. I thought they might get back on track when they started talking about hackers, then they went off the deep end again.

If people are that damn worried about smart meters, get legislation passed where they are forced to send a reeding only once a month so no basic tracking of when you might be home or not can be gleamed. Have a few third party security companies evaluate them for security/hacking threats. The question into their accuracy, well that's a valid question that should be asked about all meters, regularly.

The gripe i have with seemingly most digital meters are that they all seem to be "greedy" in that they don't count backwards if you're supplying power back to the grid. They even have an indicator that tells you when you're supplying more power than you're using, but it will not count backwards. If you want to take advantage of that, you have to get them to install a second meter to count outgoing only. And from what i've read, not all places allow selling back to the grid.

 

[cbrsurfr]

Your link is useless, it brings up a subscription page and if you click "not now" you get thrown to today's homepage.

OK, but no cliffs for you!

[size=-2]One of Chicago's largest suburbs uses a type of water meter that it knows has regularly overcharged residents — sometimes by hundreds of dollars a bill — while failing to give the public accurate information about the scope of the problem.

Tinley Park was one of the first towns to use so-called smart meters to record water usage in homes using electronic instead of mechanical parts. The village has pitched the brand of meters it uses as more accurate than mechanical models, but a Tribune investigation has found that the meters regularly overstate how much water has gone through them, resulting in overcharges to residents.


The village has known of the problem for years yet failed in key ways to ferret out bad meters. When the village found bad meters, it repeatedly did not fully refund residents. It has tried to explain away the problem in ways contradicted by its own records, including understating by at least half the number of overbilling meters it has documented. And those records lack details on how thousands more meters have failed — making it impossible to determine the true number of meters the village has discovered with the problem.

"This was a disaster from the first day," said Bob Soga, a retired Public Works employee.

What is happening in the suburb offers a cautionary tale of how consumers can lose money as utilities across the country move to meters that measure quantities electronically.

The danger to consumers can be particularly acute in Illinois, which does little to regulate publicly owned water utilities even as consumers face skyrocketing water rates. Sugar Grove, the only other suburb known to have used the brand, called SmartMeter, also has fielded complaints of overcharges, records show.

In a town that regularly boasts of being on national lists of best places to live, Tinley Park officials say the problem is isolated and relatively harmless. They say they catch almost all mistakes before they lead to overcharges.


"The meters don't overcharge. They misrecord what's going through," said Public Works Director Dale Schepers.

Village officials, he said, "don't just take the numbers and send out bills and then, you know, actually overcharge people."

But village records acknowledge $90,000 in refunds or bill adjustments. And a Tribune review of a sample of cases suggests some residents were owed far more. It's unclear just how much more could be owed because the village said it was too hard to provide the Tribune the data needed for such an analysis.

Beyond the attempt to get a full refund, the cases reviewed by the Tribune show residents at times struggled to get the village to even acknowledge they were overcharged.

Robert Free said it took repeated complaints over 16 months to get his water meter replaced and a refund in early 2013. He felt so frustrated that he kept a spreadsheet logging showers, laundry cycles, dishwasher runs and toilet flushes to figure out why his bills were so high.


Tinley Park, one of Chicago’s largest suburbs uses a type of water meter that it knows has regularly overcharged residents — sometimes by hundreds of dollars a bill — while failing to give the public accurate information about the scope of the problem, a Tribune analysis found. June 3, 2015. (Chicago Tribune)

"I was overbilled," he said. "What I said to them was … 'You took my money, and you shouldn't have had it. I want it back.' "

Bill and Cynthia Sifuentes said the village failed to alert them that the meters can overcharge — instead telling them to check for toilet leaks — before eventually acknowledging the meter was to blame for high bills.

"They hid it," Bill Sifuentes said.

National experts, including one cited by the village, have told the Tribune that the meters are so unreliable, the village should replace them.

The fact that such an overcharge problem exists troubled Tom Kelly, a Maryland water official who heads the industry's committee on meter standards. He said it "should never, ever, ever happen."

Consistent problem

The problem is known as "spinning," a term that refers to how the readings on a meter climb higher and faster than they should.

Imagine the figures on a gas pump rising faster than the amount of gas coming out of a hose. Water meters can over-record the same way, although the spinning can be tougher for residents to spot because meters don't display prices. Those costs come in bills every three months, compiled by village workers who take quarterly readings that are converted to dollar amounts owed.

To study the problem, the Tribune obtained from the village hundreds of paper and electronic records and, in an analysis, found 355 cases of meters the village diagnosed as spinning since 2007. That's more than double the 150 figure the village gave residents in an online article. It also doesn't count thousands more meter failures identified in village documents that lacked details on how they broke.

The Tribune also reviewed 38 specific cases of spinning meters and found failures in how the village discovered and handled the spinning. Reporters also pored over another set of records of 30 special tests done by the village on SmartMeters and uncovered more accuracy concerns.

Reporters also reviewed village announcements to residents about the meters and found officials gave residents inaccurate and incomplete information about the problem.

The village could not provide records on exactly how many meters spun since the first SmartMeters arrived in 2002.

Back then, the village had aging, traditional meters with mechanical parts. As those parts wore, the meters measured less and less of the water flowing through.

Rich Bennett, a salesman who used to work for Tinley Park, introduced the town to British firm Severn Trent and its new electronic SmartMeter, which promised "accuracy for life" with precision "at the rate of a drip."

The village, believing the meters would pay for themselves, according to documents, bought enough to cover a fifth of the town.

Problems soon emerged. Bennett recalled that some of the first batch of SmartMeters spun. Soga said meters kept spinning for as long as he worked at the village, through fall 2007.

"This was just an everyday occurrence," he said. "There were hundreds of them, just hundreds of them."

Red flags were seen by the Florida firm that has long sold meter supplies to Tinley Park. Floyd Salser, an engineer who runs the firm, said he used to sell the Severn Trent meters but stopped because of widespread complaints of reliability.


Tinley Park chose a different path. According to documents, the town, still believing it could make more money through SmartMeters, bought enough for every home.

As problems with the meters continued, the village complained to Severn Trent, records show. In 2013, the village agreed to a nearly $186,000 payout if it voided the warrantees of the remaining Severn Trent meters. After that, anytime a SmartMeter had a problem, it was up to the village to fix it.


A spokesman for Severn Trent in the United States said it was no longer in the water meter business and no one at the company was available to comment.

Meter testing

In the midst of the Tribune investigation, village officials this year mailed a newsletter to all residents with an article that acknowledged the meters had problems. It posted a similar article online. But the articles included explanations contradicted by the village's own records:

• The village described the problem initially as meter "failures" but didn't acknowledge that residents could be overcharged.

• The village said its failure rate was normal, except for an "unusual spike" traced to a single batch of meters and dealt with years ago. But records show spinning in many batches throughout the years — with 2014 having the highest number of listed cases of any year.

• The village claimed it regularly, randomly tested meters, and all meters tested within national standards. Yet the Tribune found that Tinley Park had only recently begun testing SmartMeters, and, of 30 tests, 18 ended with a meter overstating a flow measurement that violated industry standards.

After the Tribune questioned the village in March about the inconsistencies, the village rewrote its online article, acknowledging that meters spun, removed the reference to a specific batch being failures and tweaked its language regarding the standards. It said the meters met industry standards "at the time of installation." For some meters in service, that was a decade ago.

Officials also initially assured residents that existing meters were "within" the industry standards for accuracy. Now, the village said the meters tested "close to" standards. When asked how close was close enough, the village declined to say.

Kelly, the industry's top official on accuracy, works for a Maryland utility. He reviewed village test results provided by the Tribune and said he would have flunked many of the meters that Tinley Park tested.

The online article also gave assurances to residents about practices the village used to hunt bad meters, but the Tribune found that the village's process missed case after case of spinning meters.

The village has touted software that it says easily pinpoints bad meters so they can be quickly fixed before residents are overcharged. In October, Schepers told the Tribune that "99.9 percent is, we get the reading, it looks out of whack, we do the investigation and, if need be, we make an adjustment."

But reviews of hundreds of pages of records show that, many times, the town didn't catch the mistakes. The special software often missed red flags. Sometimes the village tested suspicious meters and said they were fine, only to return months later and confirm they were spinning, according to records.

Even in cases triggered by software alerts, the village delayed testing. Instead, the village quizzed residents about their water use, such as whether they had additional house guests, watered new sod or filled pools — despite seeing signs of potential spinning.

Tinley Park residents Brian and Denise Miller got a $710 water bill in July 2011. They said it typically costs them just $100 to fill their modest pool with water every year.

"That's why we were like, 'Where would seven swimming pools of water be?' " Denise Miller recalled. Their meter was found to be spinning and was replaced. They received a refund of about $650.

Residents complain

In cases reviewed by the Tribune, many residents got relief only if they spotted problems and complained, often repeatedly.

Most residents were first sent dye strips to put in their toilets to see if perhaps the bowl was leaking — such was the case for Bill Sifuentes. He said the village, knowing it has a problem, should immediately be checking suspect meters without making residents do the tests.

"What if you've got an elderly person and they don't even know how to use the strips?" he said.

Notes by village employees in village records help buttress Sifuentes' argument.

One woman — described as an elderly, physically disabled widow who lived alone — repeatedly complained since at least 2010 that her water bill was too high. She was repeatedly sent dye strips, according to documents. The village finally tested her meter more than four years after her first complaint. By then the meter's screen had gone blank, but the village worker wrote that he suspected it had been spinning.

Since the change, her new meter recorded an average of 25 percent less water per day than her old meter claimed, the Tribune found.

That woman's experience highlights the contradictions in the village's explanation of how meters spin — an explanation that can cost residents money. The village has told residents that when meters begin to spin, they spin so ferociously that they're easily spotted: "This spinning condition only lasts a brief time, and the recorded consumption is much too excessive to be mistaken for normal use," the village wrote in its latest online message to residents this year.

That's why, the village said, those with spinning meters typically deserve refunds for only the most recent bill.

A sample of cases confirmed that residents whose meters were spinning typically got just one bill reduced. Yet the Tribune, in its review of dozens of cases, found evidence that most of those meters were spinning for months, perhaps years, before the village acknowledged a problem. Robert Free said he tapped on his pipe and saw his meter readings jump — more than a year after he first complained and the village said his meter was OK.

The village initially cut only one of his bills, from $136 to $102. He said he had to argue that he was owed more, and the village agreed to refund him more money if his new meter proved he used less water. When his new meter proved it, the village refunded Free another $167 to cover another 1 1/2 years of presumed overcharges.

Longtime residents Carl and Donna Gerlich had years of unexplained spikes, with no intervention from the village, until they complained and the village found spinning in 2011. The village cut their water bills by $109. Had the village acknowledged spinning occurred earlier, as the village did for Free, the Gerlichs would be owed $317 more.


"We pay our taxes. We pay a lot of taxes ... and the least you expect is for the village that you live in not to cheat you," Donna Gerlich said. "That bothers me greatly."

Village officials say they have never knowingly overcharged residents. Yet they acknowledge they've done no tests to better gauge how meters spin. To defend their rationale on how meters spin, they cited conversations with Salser, who helps set industry standards and whose firm specializes in meter testing equipment.


Salser told the Tribune that his firm years ago found that that type of meter seemed to spin in obvious ways. But, when told of the cases uncovered in Tinley Park, Salser said that it also "makes perfect sense" that meters could be spinning in ways not easily detected until a big failure.

The future

Salser said he was surprised the village still was using 19,500 SmartMeters, a model he said that has "absolutely the worst performance" of any he's known. He suggested the village consider taking them out and charging residents a flat water fee — similar to what's done in most of Chicago — until it can install more reliable meters.

"They're not going to get better," he said. "It's time to pull the plug and fix it."

The village can keep using the meters as long as it wants — regardless of accuracy. In Illinois, only water utilities run by private firms are required to ensure tested meters meet industry standards. And without thorough testing, Kelly said there's no way to know for sure how many meters in Tinley Park may be overcharging.

Tinley Park said it spent $1.8 million to buy all the meters and it would cost too much to test all the meters or replace them.

In 2013, the village started replacing failing meters, first with a mix of meters using mechanical parts, then a different type of electronic technology. But nearly 90 percent of homes continue to have SmartMeters.

One house that has a SmartMeter is Soga's. The retired village employee knows to regularly check it for wild readings. He hopes others learn to do the same.

"I know there's some spinning meters out there right now, and people don't know," he said, "and they're paying the bill."[/size]

 

[PowerEngineer]

Is it just me or do these links seem awfully loony? and i'm generally paranoid... for what i managed to read of them, they are only so many things they can gleam from your power usage. the detail they suggest doesn't seem possible with out other input to narrow it down. I thought they might get back on track when they started talking about hackers, then they went off the deep end again.

Certainly a lot of paranoia out there when it comes to smart meters. That said, there are some real issues worthy of careful consideration.

One advantage of smart meters is that they provide the ability to track hourly power consumption which you need in order to consider time-of-day rates that would allow customers using power in off-hours to pay less (and conversely charge on-hour customers more) which is arguably fairer (although few utilities currently have such rates). On the other hand, this hourly data in the wrong hands could show patterns that indicate when a customer's home is unoccupied as a daily work/school patterns or when on vacation.

Another potential issue is that smart meters can be equipped to turn service on or off. This also saves time and money (particularly in apartment buildings where tenant turnover is high), but widens the range of things that a malicious hacker could do.

I'm thinking that people concerned about issues like these should be even more worried about their cell phones (and the apps they download) and their cable TV and internet providers who can just as easily collect similar information.

If people are that damn worried about smart meters, get legislation passed where they are forced to send a reeding only once a month so no basic tracking of when you might be home or not can be gleamed. Have a few third party security companies evaluate them for security/hacking threats. The question into their accuracy, well that's a valid question that should be asked about all meters, regularly.

Just to be clear here, smart meters are not being continuously read; they store data that is 'read' on some regular schedule. A once-a-month reading could include hourly consumption values for the entire month. Limiting data collection to just one consumption number for the month would undercut the future value of smart metering for improved forecasting of electrical consumption and time-of-day billing possibilities.

Yes, the accuracy of metering and the method by which the meters are read are really two independent issues.

The gripe i have with seemingly most digital meters are that they all seem to be "greedy" in that they don't count backwards if you're supplying power back to the grid. They even have an indicator that tells you when you're supplying more power than you're using, but it will not count backwards. If you want to take advantage of that, you have to get them to install a second meter to count outgoing only. And from what i've read, not all places allow selling back to the grid.

"greedy". Ah yes, a common characterization.

Rather than launch into a full-fledged defense, let me just say that utilities (at least those that are investor owned) are subject to more regulation that any other industry you deal with. The procedures that utilities follow, including such popular ones as rates and cut-offs for nonpayment, are reviewed and approved by state commissions. Among the considerations is fairness to all customers and the minimization of cross subsidies (where one set of customers is subsidizing another).

I think it's fair to say that most utilities currently permit "net metering" which does allow a single meter to run both ways. The problem is that there's no assurance that the value of the power being put back into the system is the same as the value of the power being taken from the system. When it isn't, that difference is adding costs that eventually find their way into raising rates for all customers in that class (i.e. cross subsidization). The size of this problem is obviously growing as the number of customers installing solar panels, etc. takes off (really a good thing). At some point, utilities will (IMHO) have to switch to either separate in/out metering with different rates or to time-of-day (net) metering with cost-based hourly rates. You really should not have the customers who can't afford the investment in solar subsidizing the more well-to-do customers that can.

My two cents...

 

[WHAMPOM]

"i know the ppl who live in this house i dont like them i am gonna write down they are using 100% more kw than they really are"

A complaint call to the company that gets the meter reader's ass fired?

 

[1sikbITCH]

Hmmm avoid bad meter readers by opting out of the service that avoids meter readers, ensuring a meter reader must read your meter. Ok......

No meter reader reads your fucking meter. They just drive by and point the scanner at your house and the computer records it on their laptop. This isn't the 1970s for christsake. Have you ever had to let someone in to read the meter? My folks did when I was like 5.

It occurs to me that there might be some hick towns where they are still in the 70s. No offense to the yokels intended.

 

[PowerEngineer]

No meter reader reads your fucking meter. They just drive by and point the scanner at your house and the computer records it on their laptop. This isn't the 1970s for christsake. Have you ever had to let someone in to read the meter? My folks did when I was like 5.

It occurs to me that there might be some hick towns where they are still in the 70s. No offense to the yokels intended.

My observation is that the use of profanity only increases the embarrassment of being mistaken. Various forms of automated meter reading, including the drive-by types you refer to, only started to take hold over the last 10-15 years. There are many utilities that rely completely or in large part on meter readers who actually read the dials on their customers meters.

Perhaps San Francisco is a bit of a "hick town" compared to Baltimore, but here's a link to their analog meter reading schedule anyway:

http://www.pge.com/en/myhome/saveenergymoney/smartmeter/analogmeters/schedule/index.page

You can also read this report to get a better sense of how far along we are in the transition away from old electromechanical meters:

http://www.edisonfoundation.net/iei/Documents/IEI_SmartMeterUpdate_0914.pdf

 

[Red Squirrel]

I guess one thing that could be a problem with smart meters is if you are involved in some kind of court case. The court or other org/person against you can probably get the data from the power company via warrant and determine whether or not you were home at a certain time and that could potentially turn the case out of your favour.

I guess one way to combat this would be to run all your stuff off batteries, and charge them up at a fixed interval. Then all the power company sees is that you don't use power for a while, then you use a lot, and then it slowly ramps down as batteries are charged, and repeat.

I've never heard of this data being used against someone though, so it's probably not really something worth worrying too much about. If you are using electricity for something illegal, then use wind, solar, gas etc... instead. Ex: grow op.

 

[BxgJ]

My observation is that the use of profanity only increases the embarrassment of being mistaken. Various forms of automated meter reading, including the drive-by types you refer to, only started to take hold over the last 10-15 years. There are many utilities that rely completely or in large part on meter readers who actually read the dials on their customers meters.

Perhaps San Francisco is a bit of a "hick town" compared to Baltimore, but here's a link to their analog meter reading schedule anyway:

http://www.pge.com/en/myhome/saveenergymoney/smartmeter/analogmeters/schedule/index.page

You can also read this report to get a better sense of how far along we are in the transition away from old electromechanical meters:

http://www.edisonfoundation.net/iei/Documents/IEI_SmartMeterUpdate_0914.pdf

This. It was surprising how many people didn't know (or simply didn't think about) that someone read their meter every month. Perhaps because many were installed in locations that were easy to access. Of course this information was available in the monthly bill, but I guess many don't read that extra stuff. Hard to access meters often got radio read capability installed. It's all been replaced here now with smart meters, but that was fairly recent.

 

[JoeBleed]

I got interrupted yesterday and forgot about this, but below was still sitting waiting to be posted so i'll leave it at this for now as i don't remember everything i was thinking about typing yesterday.

The problem is that there's no assurance that the value of the power being put back into the system is the same as the value of the power being taken from the system.

can you explain further what you mean by this?

I can see a lot of advantages to smart meters. I don't have a problem with them other than the possible security stand point. But i have the problem with everything electronic. mostly remotely accessible devices. It's an on going concern. Seeing patterns of when people are home or away are about the only easy patterns i think can be determined. most of the other stuff in those links seem like more information would be required to guess at the things they are worried about.

For the reading aspect, wasn't sure if they were part of a municipal network where they were regularly monitored or not. for the power company using historical data to try and forecast future power usage, that's fine. But if a large enough group wants that disabled, have the meters capable of just dumping final numbers at the month end. But either they get charged more, or people with smart meters get charged less. Has anyone seen a rate decrees when smart meters were deployed? I can't say as i still have an analog meter. But this is to aid them more than us. We aren't really seeing anything out of it that i can think of.

 

[JoeBleed]

This. It was surprising how many people didn't know (or simply didn't think about) that someone read their meter every month. Perhaps because many were installed in locations that were easy to access. Of course this information was available in the monthly bill, but I guess many don't read that extra stuff. Hard to access meters often got radio read capability installed. It's all been replaced here now with smart meters, but that was fairly recent.

and in some locations, such as the substation at the manufacturing plant i work at, they had us run a phone line out to it so they can dial in and check the reeding. I guess it's too far off the road or too much interference for a wireless read from a drive-by scan.

And as i said in my late reply above, i still have an analog meter. someone has to come by and read it. I'm a ways off the main road too. They've even had to pull my meter for some electrical work and they replaced it with either the same analog meter or a new analog meter. I'd have to look aback over my past bills to see if i got new number readings. but they probably just put the same one back in. they had a perfect opportunity to replace it with a smart meter if they were doing it in my area, but they didn't.