We got the basics of this in the first year of university Physics classes, then revisited it two years later to solve the full set of field equations for both ideal and real materials, and then measure the difference in the lab to get the right values in the model for the real materials and see the affect of mechanical design choices. The hardest part, by far, was summing the effects of all the fields in the disc and the topology (shape) of the induced currents. We also had to allow for the thermodynamics. A factor in the size and design of the disc is to dissipate heat, particularly to minimize peak local heating during high loads, and to have consistent behavior during the full range of environmental conditions. Aluminum is chosen for the disc because it has a good balance between conductivity and heat transfer while also minimizing angular inertia. Iron alloys could not be used because they could be magnetized (though we did not consider austenitic stainless steels). A copper alloy could work, but the disc mechanical design would need to be very different, with affects that would ripple through to the rest of the meter design.
@paulmeynell88662 жыл бұрын
Now that sounds like a proper degree, thanks for the info.
@veganath2 жыл бұрын
@@paulmeynell8866 yep someone with a degree worth having...lol
@nite11542 жыл бұрын
Sounds like you went to a good program/school, thanks for the additional info
@jeffwombold91672 жыл бұрын
Austenitic stainless still has a magnetic proponent.
@jimmyb14512 жыл бұрын
@@jeffwombold9167 proponent? I do not think that means what you think it means.
@rwbishop2 жыл бұрын
Out of passing interest... eons ago, a friend lived in a large apartment complex. All the electric meters were on on a wall in the laundry room... there must have been 50 or more. He was doing laundry one day, & out of mere curiosity found his meter & noticed it rotating quite fast... then noted it speeding/slowing in time various laundry machines cycling on/off! Cheesed him off... but to be sure he ran & turned off his main breaker, & returned to find the same! He called & reported to his DWP; and they were there seemingly within minutes. It seems the landlord had jumpers behind that wall & rotated the laundry and common areas to different meters on a regular basis. He said it turned into a colossal legal S storm that lasted about a year.
@rkan22 жыл бұрын
WTF! Can't you just share laundry toom electricity costs between everyone? must be expensive elevtricity there!
@jfbeam2 жыл бұрын
@@rkan2 Or charge for use (i.e. a "coin op")? Stealing power from individual residents is a felony.
@eDoc20202 жыл бұрын
@@jfbeam I'm guessing it _was_ coin operated, the owner was probably trying to reduce the expenses.
@johnhaller58512 жыл бұрын
I had a friend in a similar situation. Everything in his apartment was turned off, but the meter was still turning. So, he pulled his main fuse and put it in a drawer and left for a weeks vacation. It turned out that they ran the emergency lighting off his circuit, and since they couldn't find his main fuse holder, they had to rewire the emergency lighting elsewhere. They were not happy, but couldn't do much about it.
@tomaszwota14652 жыл бұрын
@@johnhaller5851 that's surely illegal, emergency lightning should be connected to a separate source, not to an individual apartment's meter board/meter.
@danmenes31432 жыл бұрын
I think the grid pattern of divots in the rotor is intended to make the rotor acceptably flat. When you stamp sheet metal, it often won't come out flat if you just smash it between two flat dies. The blank was almost flat to begin with, so the tiny amount it moves during stamping isn't enough to overcome the metal's elastic limit. When the press opens, the stamping springs back to it's original almost-but-not-quite flat shape. But if you make little divots everywhere, you stretch the metal much more. By exceeding the metal's elastic limit, you convince it to take on the shape of the flat dies.
@ReinoGoo2 жыл бұрын
And you get a thicker disc with the same piece of metal.
@soupisgoodfood422 жыл бұрын
Thanks, I always thought it was something like that, as I've only ever seen the pattern on folded metal parts that required a reasonable amount of precision, like a sheet of mild steel inside a printer with posts for mounting gears and motors etc.
@danmenes31432 жыл бұрын
@@soupisgoodfood42 Yep. You used to see this pattern all the time on chassis components in camera and electronic gear that required a modicum of precision. I've seen it in movie cameras, cassette recorders, VCRs and so forth. Anymore you don't see it so much, because so many consumer applications have replaced precision mechanicals (expensive) with electronics (inexpensive and usually perform better). A printer is one of the few places where a consumer device still requires high precision.
@fitingsthdown2 жыл бұрын
woah!!! that's a really cool and simple way to solve a complicated problem! Do u know why most utility companies chose to go with digital readers now days? there was alot of backlash in my city about it because it supposedly gave the electric companies too much control?
@Curt_Sampson2 жыл бұрын
@@fitingsthdown The primary reason would be cost, particularly for the components to read the meter remotely since that's a lot easier to do with digital technology. If you don't need remote reading the cost differential is a lot less (and might actually be negative), but sending a person around to look at each meter and record the current value on it is quite expensive when you have millions of meters that need to be read each month!
@mikefochtman71642 жыл бұрын
You have to remember that V x I x COS(theta) on the disc creates a TORQUE, not an RPM. That means once the friction is overcome, it would go faster and faster. Those permanent magnets provide a drag proportional to the speed of the disc. Without the drag magnets it just won't record watt-hours. When you add drag proportional to speed, and TORQUE proportional to Watts, you get Watt-Hour.
@jb96522 жыл бұрын
Great - thanks! I knew there had to be some such mechanism but didn't know what and where it was.
@d942yd422 жыл бұрын
The magnets provide time in the equation. Thank you
@CarlVanWormerAE7GD2 жыл бұрын
The drag is from "eddy current braking", which is responsible for the neat effect of dropping a strong magnet through a copper pipe ( kzbin.info/www/bejne/onWseHl8Zt2Zhq8 ). Side story: We had an interactive TV exercycle that drove an electromagnet that was next to an aluminum disk which was spun by the bicycle pedals. After a couple minutes of peddling, I wondered where all the energy was going. My curiosity was quicker than my smarts as I reached down to touch the disk. WOW! that thing was hot!
@atexnik2 жыл бұрын
How do you calculate how much drag you need? Also, why is it proportional?
@jb96522 жыл бұрын
@@atexnik The voltage induced in the disc by the rotation of the disc in the magnetic field from the permanent magnets will be proportional to the rotational velocity of the disc (Faraday's law). This voltage will cause a current to flow in the disc that is proportional to the voltage (Ohm's law). This current will give rise to a torque that is proportional to the current and hence proportional to the rotational velocity of the disc. To continue beyond your question: This torque opposes the torque caused by V I Cos(Theta), the power consumed by the customer. For any given power consumption, the disc will settle at a rotational velocity where the torque from the power consumed by the customer is matched by the torque from the drag effect (because in that situation there is no net torque to accelerate or decelerate the disc). Hence the rotational velocity of the disc is proportional to the power consumed by the customer. The scale factor for the drag torque effect could be chosen so that the bearing and gearing friction is not a problem for low consumed power, and disc rotational speed is not a problem for high consumed power. These requirements conflict, so a compromise would be chosen in practice.
@VincentGroenewold2 жыл бұрын
I love the mechanical solutions of the time just before the digital age, they are so incredibly clever always.
@LSD971232 жыл бұрын
I think most of them reached their topmost point of advancement before taken down by digital stuff. Mechanical stuff of the past decades are always fascinating as they're bot reliable and performing good.
@TlD-dg6ug2 жыл бұрын
You mean analog. Lol, even the digital stuff is mechanical.
@TheSpud22332 жыл бұрын
That style of plug in meter base can actually have the meter installed rotated 90deg, when in this arrangement none of the electrical connections are made and the meter is just acting as a cover for the bare terminals. This function is used when the electricity company wants to disconnect supply from a property without removing the meter from site as the meter is tied to the address. It is used mainly when disconnecting people for non payment or when a rental property is unoccupied for an extended period and has the advantage that the meter can have the seals fitted to prevent the customer from tampering with the disconnection. Source - former metering tech
@jpsimas22 жыл бұрын
The amount of accumulated knowledge built into these things is quite amazing
@sandordugalin89512 жыл бұрын
You should see Technology Connections take apart an old analog jukebox. The selector mechanism? Like, daaaaamn.
@electronicsNmore2 жыл бұрын
Years ago I had a bundle of wires inside a conduit and needed to figure out which of the 20 or so wires was connected to a particular branch circuit. I made sure every appliance was turned off, then connected a hair dryer on high to the branch circuit I was trying to identify. I then held a 1" x 3/4" neodymium magnet close to the wire bundle and spread the wires apart. It was very easy to identify the correct wire, the magnet was vibrating in my hand just like you showed in the video. A very useful method.
@ZaneDaMagicPufferDragon2 жыл бұрын
Very interesting 🧐 effects of the 50/60hz on the magnetic 🧲 fields causing the shaking.
@electronicsNmore2 жыл бұрын
@@ZaneDaMagicPufferDragon Also works great identifying DC circuits. The wire will be pulled toward the magnet or pushed away depending on the magnet's orientation.
@Paxmax2 жыл бұрын
Cody from "Cody's Lab" had a small piece of magnet inserted into the skin, with that he could sense magnetic flux near it, like high current in a wire. Basically enabling a 6:th sense.
@seeigecannon2 жыл бұрын
@@Paxmax I used to have a magnet like that too. I could feel sufficently strong magnetic flux (removing stir bars in the lab was also a fun party trick). I could really feel it when I was MIG welding. No pain with that, but it was the only times I would have my hand around 50+ A. I could also feel the flux around motors for a good 6" inches.
@monad_tcp2 жыл бұрын
@@Paxmax I think he removed it because a piece of it broke.
@donob78232 жыл бұрын
Hi Dave .. you did an excellent job explaining all this. Back in the 80s I spent over 10yrs working for a power company calibrating single & 3 phase meters and troubleshooting meter problems. People used to drill holes through the case and poke a bit of wire into the brake magnet (and of course remove it before the meter reader was due) and play around trying to slow them down with an external magnet. Our own experiments with external magnets showed that you are just as likely to speed the meter up ... This particular meter like most later ones has magnetic suspension usng the two repulsion magnets at the bottom combined with an upper and lower centering guide needle .. We typically tested meter calibration at both unity and .5 PF (Cos 60), the power factor adjust is the 2 copper vanes on the rotatable shaft. Full load adj usually involves movement of the brake magnet but this later L&G appears to be using a different form of brake magnet adjustment
@holgerk.46502 жыл бұрын
Hi, I do have a similar job in the "Zählerwerkstatt" (so called in german) as you in the late 70s. It was the time where I get my first programmable calculator (a TI59).So I wrote programs to help us calibrating the meters. It is funny to look back to those times... I'm living in northern germany. I wish you a happy new year and take care.
@jg3742 жыл бұрын
We had a mechanical meter for a little while with a solar system. The retailer's systems eventually managed to cope with negative electricity usage each month, although eventually they fitted a non smart digitial meter that only lasted a few months before they replaced it again with one with a radio. It was pretty fun to watch the mechanical meter on a bright day when someone was welding as it would be spinning moderately fast backwards, before spinning very fast forwards for a few seconds, then going back to its usual spinning backwards :).
@elvinhaak2 жыл бұрын
Actually here... first I had a digital meter which was not able to run backwards for the solar-panels so the installation was changed into a mechanical meter for years but then needed to be replaced with a 'Smart meter'. Well, yes, smart for the company, not for me. Normally I use about the same as the solarpanels provide, thus the old meter was just standing still for days and sometimes going a bit forward in the night, going back during daytime. Well, that is not possible anymore and much more measured energy now with the Smart meter...
@nickwallette62012 жыл бұрын
@@elvinhaak The house always wins. :-)
@monad_tcp2 жыл бұрын
@@elvinhaak nowadays they put 2 meters, but it doesn't matter, because they buy energy from you cheaper than they sell, no matter what. so you best not put the energy back when you don't need. put it into cryptocurrency, lol.
@londonnight9372 жыл бұрын
@@elvinhaak id get my own mechanical meter in series with it just to be sure
@imeprezime128511 ай бұрын
Funny. Most, if not all, mechanical electricity meters in my country have a built-in power flow backstop. If you feed power to the grid, the discs rotates backwards, but whell with digits does not
@GonzoDonzo2 жыл бұрын
My uncle worked for the local utility company. He saw every trick imaginable to alter the meter. He made sure his house had the "best" one
@ForTheBirbs2 жыл бұрын
The meters in my 1970's block are still the clock face dials. None of this "odometer rubbish". 😀😀😀
@DawnOfRiku2 жыл бұрын
Mid 2000s neighborhood here. I also have the clock face dials! My neighbor has a 7-segment face though
@Paxmax2 жыл бұрын
Ah, they look more like water meters?
@Renville802 жыл бұрын
The pointer registers have the advantage of consistent friction, while all cyclometer registers have a weight to help push the last dial from 9 to 0, as multiple drums need to advance in the same interval.
@erintyres3609 Жыл бұрын
The dials are all on the same gear train, so half of them rotate clockwise, and half of them counterclockwise. Anyone who is assigned to read meters is given some training first.
@jamess17872 жыл бұрын
Had a funny one for you. Had an analogue meter on a remote site that was permanently shut down; site uses like $150/month in power. After the site was shut-down, 3 months went by, utility company swapped the utility meter, and then another billing cycle went by and they billed us $15,000 because they thought the meter rolled over. What a great day at the office. 🤙
@Veikra Жыл бұрын
the old "lets throw that on his side of the fence and see if they notice" trick
@Hasitier2 жыл бұрын
This was really fascinating. I always wondered how those old meters work. Thanks Dave for the great explanation. Please do more of those educational videos.
@pe1dnn2 жыл бұрын
3 Phase meters are interesting too, they just have 3 of those disks on the same spindle. Being connected on one spindle it will measure true resulting power. These measure true power regeardless of the noise on the powerlines due to switching powersupplies, led lamps and other odd consumers. Digital meters need all kinds of clever engineering to get the same accurate result. Those mechanical meters do not need any of it and are just accurate, even 50 year old ones.
@aggese2 жыл бұрын
Last I saw one of these for three phase it still only had one disk, I would assume that it have some mechanics to transmitt and if needed add together the three inputa
@750kv82 жыл бұрын
Ours got 2 disks.
@drozcompany41322 жыл бұрын
Thanks for the info. I was just wondering how accurate these were with large amounts of harmonic distortion in the load. I have one of these from the 40s mounted on a panel that I use to track hydroponics lighting energy usage. It's almost completely identical to this except it has dial indicators, but the internals are essentially the same.
@Renville802 жыл бұрын
The earliest ones as well as many European ones have multiple disks, but many North American models have two or three stators around the edge of the disk. The single disk meters actually have laminated disks to minimize interference between the stators.
@Renville802 жыл бұрын
@@liam3284 Var hour meters have a special transformer in series with the voltage coils to shift the voltage field another 90 degrees.
@chelstonthomas11272 жыл бұрын
I worked on meters for 4 years, and that was the most concise lecture I have yet seen.
@byronwatkins25652 жыл бұрын
Faraday's law: The induced emf in the disk and the induced eddy current in the disk is proportional to the flux rate of change. The torque on the disk is proportional to the eddy current times the instantaneous magnetic field. When voltage is maximum (positive or negative), it provides a background magnetic field centered on the coil assembly so that the offset eddy current induced by the rapidly changing current is attracted or repelled. When the current is maximum (positive or negative), it provides a background magnetic field offset from the center that attracts or repels the centered eddy current generated by the quickly changing voltage. All four torques are in the same direction. Torque provides angular acceleration except that the permanent magnets' eddy currents provide opposite torque proportional to disk speed. Together the disk's speed is in equilibrium at some speed proportional to the IV's torque... proportional to power. The counter integrates the disk's speed (power) wrt time to yield Watt-hours. Very sharp spikes are filtered out by the disk's inertia.
@tomwimmenhove46522 жыл бұрын
The temperature compensation blew my fucking mind. It's amazing how much engineering goes into these simple-seeming little electromechanical devices.
@peglor2 жыл бұрын
If you want to see real insanity, look at marine chronometers from the 1700s... Mechanical timekeeping good to 1 second in 100 days for finding longitude at sea, when modern all mechanical watches (Even the ones with the certified marine chronometer tag) are only guaranteed good to a few seconds a day. At the time they were the most complex devices ever manufactured - temperature compensation was a huge component of making them keep good time.
@RODALCO20072 жыл бұрын
The dimples on the disc can be scanned with a photo electric cell during calibration. It speeds up the testing process when a line of meters is on the test bench. The readers are mounted above the meter and read the 10 dimples as the reflect the light back from the opto LED in the photocel. So for each revolution of the disc, 10 pulses are 'generated'. The Landis & Gyr CL 147 has similar patterns on the disc, which was a predecessor of this meter, made in the UK.
@mikeselectricstuff2 жыл бұрын
I wonder if the dimples are to stop the disc warping over temperature changes, reducing surface stresses
@EEVblog2 жыл бұрын
Possible. There has to be something to it, you don't just go to that effort for no reason.
@6581punk2 жыл бұрын
Probably a similar reason golf balls have dimples?
@SupremeRuleroftheWorld2 жыл бұрын
@@EEVblog its security. the dimples are presses in as you see in a couple other critical places like where the counter is. that makes it nearly impossibe to duplicate or mess with the disk without the inspector seeing it. its VERY common in eastern europe to open these units, replace the disks and counters to give less counts and put it back together with new seals you can buy at any shady corner. different brands have different styles. some have small lines or quare dimples as siemens has and others have more intricate designs. its just a form of copy protection. a really good inspector in hungary (or bulgary, cant remember) found a meter with the "wrong" layout of dimpels. they were less well made and had slighty different spacing. they found several thousand of those fake meters in a period of a couple weeks. they were made in china and gave 30% less on the meter after checking. people that were found to have a fake meter were given insane punishments. several years in jail and fines that were like a years worth of salary. goverment does not like you stealing, that is their job....
@ristojokinen12582 жыл бұрын
when aluminium is dimpled it surface has stress on both sides and it get harden, so disk with that kind if dimple pattern is less flexible. There is reason that this aluminium disk need to be 'soft' aluminium, maybe it is pure aluminium. Other way to make it harder or less flexible is to have anodizing surface on it.
@Ma_X642 жыл бұрын
But it's actually increasing surface stresses. But yeah they can be to increase rigidity by making some stressed zones.
@nand26242 жыл бұрын
We still have analog power meters at my home. It's fun to see it, spinning like a motor when a lot of appliences are running inside house!
@anders4u2222 жыл бұрын
With todays electric prices it’s not fun to see it spin at all..
@derwissenskiosk80412 жыл бұрын
It is truly amazing how accurate these meters can measure, not to forget how little they cost. It is like the predecessor of hard drives in these regards.
@CarlVanWormerAE7GD2 жыл бұрын
I obtained one, left over from a power company customer, and built it into a benchtop power meter. I discovered that it only works well when mounted with the rotating disk axis close to vertical. It has very little friction in that orientation, but much more friction when tilted. When rotated 90 degrees from vertical, it didn't move at all.,
@pev_2 жыл бұрын
Decades ago as a young pre-teen technology enthusiast I got one of these kWh meters from my grandmother's house renovation and of course took it apart. I don't think I then understood how it works at all, it was just an interesting gadget to dismantle :) I vaguely remember wondering how the simple metal disc could spin when there is no contact with anything but the counter.
@pev_2 жыл бұрын
Oh I just remembered that it had a kind of U-shaped magnet almost like in the cartoons, except the ends were bent to almost close the shape to an O, but then again bent outward to become parallel to the long sides so that the gap in between was just large enough to allow the disc to spin freely in between. Or maybe if you imagine the Greek letter omega with just the horizontal "feet" clipped off :) I had that magnet a long time in my gadget collection as a fun thing to play with from time to time.
@SybilKibble8 ай бұрын
They are fun to tear down. I love the look and feel of the mechanical ones.
@blubb77112 жыл бұрын
I wondered for years how these things work, thank you Dave!
@LaserFur2 жыл бұрын
The turtle AMR still has the record of a automatic meter reader transmitting the reading over the power line. there was one in the outback of Australia. It read the disk spinning and counted the power. And then it would send the data over the power at ~120Hz in a narrow bandwidth signal. and it transmitted data at 33 minutes per bit. so that's 1/2000 baud.
@Renville802 жыл бұрын
Actually, Hunt Technologies’ TS1 system runs at a VERY low frequency… think it was between 5 and 15 Hz with .0015 hertz difference between adjacent transmitters, and it took over 24 hours to transmit a complete packet of information (hence the ‘turtle’ moniker). Other power line carrier systems like the Aclara system use spikes in the zero crossing interval to transmit the data, while Eaton’s system uses a higher frequency in the kHz range overlaid on the power line.
@LaserFur2 жыл бұрын
@@Renville80 Yes, but the low frequency was modulated by the switched cap into the 120Hz side bands. So the cap 1/2 cycle on and 1/2 cycle off created a 120 Hz signal and then the inverts created sidebands. I have some if someone wants to take them apart.
@M4rtingale2 жыл бұрын
I like how on the front it has an explanation of how base 10 works
@patrickdaxboeck40562 жыл бұрын
It feels nice when you compliment this precision product of my home country, Switzerland. The company name is spoken like „Landes and Ger“ as the „y“ is spoken like a „e“ in English or an short „i“ in Alemannic. Even in my current flat there are still Landis & Gyr devices at work. Indestructible and very reliable.
@patrickcannell22585 ай бұрын
The holy grail of electricity meters!
@IanScottJohnston2 жыл бұрын
It's only been a couple of years since my old school meter was removed from my house. The energy company got all confused when I kept on giving them meter readings less than the previous one in the summer months......due to the Solar PV sending it rotating backwards....:-)
@rkan22 жыл бұрын
Somehow you feel like these dumb meters could actually be better than the newer meters with net metering...
@Veikra Жыл бұрын
@@rkan2 They are, there is no software involved, no easy cheating and no antenna telling the power company you have a 20yo washing machine. Replacement of these with electronic isnt for precision sake as you can see. It is for smart grid and dual rate customer fuckery
@robertmoore2542 жыл бұрын
I was an electrician in the states for many years and one of my hobbies was collecting vintage A-base watthour meters. I have meters going back to the early 1900's and a few more modern ones. I made table lamps out of a few of the modern ones.. These meters are fascinating and beautiful in their simplicity. A voltage coil and an amperage coil and a magnet.
@3ffrige2 жыл бұрын
It’s so simple, yet complex at the same time! Stuff like this is amazing to me. Anything that computes via mechanics is so neat, like those Friedman calculators. Amazing thought is put into stuff like this
@rubabmubarrat2 жыл бұрын
I love the analog meter. When I was 6/7, I broke one of these old school meter. Used a dc motor to spin the dials with gear mechanism. It was fascinating for me at that age to use kinetic energy to show numerical values. Now after all these years, watching this video brings back memories. As always, great explaination Dave, my Aussie Teacher. Respect ++
@technolk8221 Жыл бұрын
Oh no.i did same thing with my brother.we broke school meter and dismantle that.😮
@pomonabill2202 жыл бұрын
Watt hour meters (the mechanical type) are beautiful works of engineering. With all the precision bearings and jeweled movements, and gear train for the totalizer. The old Westinghouse/GE time delay relays used in sub stations use very similar technology (eddy current motors) with magnetic drag for timing and contact placement. Also very beautiful pieces of equipment. I used to calibrate these watt hour meters and time delay relays for a local utility (DWP) so I have hands on with these and was always amazed with the engineering.
@coler1542 жыл бұрын
The lengths people go to make profit off other people is ridiculous
@typxxilps2 жыл бұрын
it might be interesting for a lot to learn more about it like the scale the disc has. The counter has an imprint of 187,5 rev per kWh so you can calculate your CURRENT CONSUMPTION based on the the time it needs to pass 5 marks for example cause the whole disc here is divided in 20 marks, not 360 or 36, just 20 which means each mark represents 1 / 20 or 5% 187,5 revs per kWh means that each rev represents roughly 1 / 200 of a kWh or 1 / 200 x 1000 Wh so it is just 5 Wh. and then you know that 4 marks out of 20 would mean roughly 1 Wh used. If it takes 20 seconds to pass 4 marks then it would mean 1 Wh in in 20 seconds, 3 Wh in a minute and 180 Wh in 1 h which tells us we had a 180 W load running over 1 hour. So you can read the consumption if you stop the time it needs to pass 10 marks or segments which would be half a rev. 3600 s / seconds stopped for half a rev x 1000 Wh / (187,5 x 2) imagine it would take 10 seconds for a half rev, then it would take 20 for a full rev and 3 revs every minute or 180 revs each hour. This would mean that 180 / 187,5 kwh would be used or we had used a load of 0,960 kW Let's assume it takes 20 seconds to achieve 1/4 rev then it would mean 3/4 revs per minute and 180 / 4 revs per hours = 45 revs and that means 45 / 187,5 kW of load or 0,240 kW or a 240 Watt load. That is the part you need to know to get behind your energy consumption. Start the water cattle and see the wheel turning a lot faster or the iron for your shirts. But you can start there at the good old ferraris once you know that the number of revs / kwh is the key to read and understand your current energy consumption. Most people here did not learn that.. For most energy consumption is still a secret and they did not learn the basics how to get behind what device needs what energy in a month or depending on the season of the year.
@doctorzaius40842 жыл бұрын
On North American watthour meters, there's always a value on the nameplate "Kh" - watthours per disc revolution, so you do this to clock the load: Kh x revolutions x 3600 / time(seconds) If you had a Kh=7.2 meter and it made 4 revolutions in 60 seconds, the average load over the past minute would be ~1700 watts. Very easy to do!
@Fanta....2 жыл бұрын
Or perhaps most people just don't care. you pay the bill and move on with your life.
@eDoc20202 жыл бұрын
@@doctorzaius4084 That's what I thought that number meant but it doesn't make as much sense when it's on a digital meter like mine. I have a 6-state animation of a moving bar and instead of one Wh per complete cycle it's one Wh per frame. IIRC the meter says the Kh is 10 but which didn't make any sense.
@doctorzaius40842 жыл бұрын
@@eDoc2020 They made it more confusing with electronic meters, but it's still the same idea. Those little bars that scroll by are supposed to be a crude simulation of a disc rotating, so it's 10Wh for a complete "revolution" (i.e. it moves through all 6 spaces and back to where it began) not 10Wh per frame. The only exception to this that I'm aware of are Itron "CENTRON" meters where the Kh=1 and each time the dot blinks on or off, you count 1Wh. Dots/lines moving to the right means forward rotation (normal), to the left means reverse rotation - if you've got solar panels exporting power, for instance. A lot of smart meters also have a "load present" function as a standard display item, but it might not be obvious just from looking at them. You would need to know what the display codes mean, and whether or not there's a multiplier.
@eDoc20202 жыл бұрын
@@doctorzaius4084 Those Itron meters are the only ones I see used over here.
@davidoswald77182 жыл бұрын
I hadn't seen CIVIL before here. Way back when I was learning electronics my instructor related "ELI the ICE man", which I found very easy to remember. He also gave us a PG version for remembering resistor color codes; but for some reason I currently am only able to remember the Navy version.
@cyberzeus7343 Жыл бұрын
Bad Boys...utter that now and you get nailed for sexual harassment. There's even a documentary about it. Amazing how low the threshold is for some...
@Veikra Жыл бұрын
@@cyberzeus7343 I am triggered at your use of the words bad boys ! REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
@LTVoyager6 ай бұрын
I likewise learned ELI the ICE man back in the 70s and also the “Navy” version of the color code, which I still remember so I guess it was an effective mnemonic. 😂
@sefarkas02 жыл бұрын
The trick is to get an old low voltage/high current filament and wire the secondary across the meter, one lead on an AC outlet the other on the mains. Then put a Variac on the primary of the filament transformer. as you raise the Variac voltage the disc slows down and starts the disc running backward. This is of course purely theoretical and is for educational purposes only.
@monad_tcp2 жыл бұрын
drilling a hole from the neighbor exactly to the correct place and putting a wood branch did the trick of slowing down the disc for me. But yours are better.
@RonLaws2 жыл бұрын
The mundane things in life that we often pay little attention to are often the most fascinating to look at and break down, glad i'm not the only one!
@JasonRobards22 жыл бұрын
This teaches and demonstrates the basic principles with a practical example as clear and efficient as possible. Another classic video.
@bobpurcell56622 жыл бұрын
Back in the 70s when I studied my EM course we used the mnemonic "ELI the ICE man" to remember the phase shift due to Inductors and Capacitors. But "CIVIL" is simpler!
@redsquirrelftw2 жыл бұрын
I like how it's simple, yet complex. Everything in there has to be just right for it to be accurate, all down to number of turns in the coil, to how far apart magnets are etc.
@jeffcard36232 жыл бұрын
I freaking love your channel, along with AvE, Mustie1, big Clive it just gives me joy and a good feeling inside!
@joekenorer2 жыл бұрын
I don't remember what it's called, but the dimpling is from a flattening process with a big press to make sure when they're stamping them out of the large sheet they're not warped.
@Dr_Mario20072 жыл бұрын
Clever engineering right there. And the single turn on one of the coils on the magnetic ammeter portion acts like a shaded pole, thus saving the company that made it a bit money, and to keep it rather simple than installing a Copper ring on the shaded pole, forcing the disc rotor to favor the pole with three - four turns coil, thus only spinning in one direction generally. (If you reverse the ammeter coil polarity against the voltage coil, or flip the ammeter coil in the other direction, so it could spin the other direction, depending on how the motor is designed - your watt-hour meter could be modified to do that as it's much more simpler.)
@m4d3ng2 жыл бұрын
5:55 - magnetic brake is the term you're after. For fun take one apart and put that disk into a drill, spin it up then introduce a U or horseshoe magnet
@byronwatkins25652 жыл бұрын
The holes in the disk stabilize the centers of the eddy current vortices and force the disk to move rather than allowing the vortices to 'slide' across the disk. I'm not sure about the brushed stripes, but I think it might compensate for aluminum's thermal coefficient of conductivity.
@TBizzell682 жыл бұрын
I’ve always been fascinated by these, maybe a little obsessed, thanks for the breakdown.
@ebhhon78262 жыл бұрын
Swiss precision design and manufacturing! Landis & Gyr is a Swiss Company, but they where bought by Siemens a few years ago ☹️
@thegenrl2 жыл бұрын
Thank you for the in-depth review!
@billmoran38122 жыл бұрын
The same principle was used for over 100 years in electric transmission line “distance” relays (device 21) that measure both the fault current in a trash mission line and the distance to the fault. These are used to prevent tripping of multiple circuit breakers on a line when a fault is detected and to only isolate the portion of the transmission line where the fault occurred. The principle of torque angle as a measure of phase angle is the same. The term “torque” is still used today with digital programmable relays that do not use rotating discs. This confuses many young engineers! I’m a utility engineer, retired after 45 years.
@pomonabill2202 жыл бұрын
Also used for time relays in substations for fault tripping.
@jawjuk2 жыл бұрын
Dave, thank you; that was utterly fascinating. You've got me running down to the cellar to watch Eddy make the disc whizz round every time I put the kettle on!
@KeritechElectronics2 жыл бұрын
Yes, it is amazing! Plus these things must be engineered for reliability and consistency over a few years or even decades, as it would be so damn impractical to cut off the power in order to swap the meter every year or two. I like the meter-base interface used in Australia - it allows for a very quick replacement (even without cutting the voltage off), way quicker than European meters, because they have screw terminals on the bottom side, covered with a plate that is sealed to prevent tampering. Oh, and retarding the meters with neodymium magnets was an energy companies' nightmare to the point that they really welcomed the modern electronic meters... By the way, I wonder how a double-tariff electromechanical meter works.
@urugulu16562 жыл бұрын
if i had to design one: a small motor that drives a reduction gear such that it rotates at 1rev/day. and an extrusion on on half on the top side of the gear and bottom on on the other half of the gear. the extrusions actuate switches that connect either one or the other meter disc driving mechanism to the circuit.
@eDoc20202 жыл бұрын
We have similar meter mounts in North America, except ours have four or five tabs because of our wacky split-voltage system. Regarding double meters, I think they superimposed signals on the power line to switch between the two modes. My guess for the actual metering part is that the current coils on each meter would be in series and they would switch the voltage coils on and off to determine which meter spins.
@lordred74622 жыл бұрын
double tariff mechanical watt meter works in conjuction with relay switch. Every day in same time (im my case at 9PM and 7AM) electromotor with generator starts in my local substation. When generator is spinning it produces 1060Hz ripple and send it to electric grid for few minutes. Mine relayed switch "hears" that ripple and switches tariff mode on watt meter. After few minutes generator disconects from grid and shuts down. It starts again when is time for another tariff change... Generator works on very accurate substation internal clock and everthing is relay powered there, very simple and robust. System works so good that mine electricity company dosn't follow seasonal hour change. During winter hours cheap tariff is from 9PM to 7AM, and during summer time cheap is from 10PM to 8AM. substations internal clock is never changed, so company save a lot of money on maintenance because God knows how many substation and clock and generator systems they have. They just move tarifs + - 1 hour and don't change anything in their system
@RODALCO20072 жыл бұрын
@@lordred7462 That motor generator system is called the Zellweger ripple system, used for tariff control, load shedding hotwater circuits, streetlights etc. In Auckland it is 1050 Hertz.
@harrisonmorrow71722 жыл бұрын
@@lordred7462 Depends on the technology your distributor chooses to use. ETSA (for instance) used a mechanical time switch rather than ripple control.
@svampebob0072 жыл бұрын
it's so simple, yet really amazing piece of engineering and problem solving.
@jbrian86182 жыл бұрын
I agree with some of the other comments regarding the dimples being there too keep the disks flat. The same tecnique has been used for many years on parts like motorcycle clutch plates, where they can also act as lube resevoirs .
@CodyLynn1002 жыл бұрын
As a fireman, pulling these out of socket is also a quick way to kill power to a residence. Where I live now, this isn't usually a big deal since the utility company is often right behind us, but we used it a lot more where I used to live.
@TeslaTales592 жыл бұрын
Very cool Dave- Analog is good for the soul.
@Chainsaw-ASMR2 жыл бұрын
I've always wondered how these meters work and the comments go deeper. nicely done sir.
@jesparon2 жыл бұрын
I used to work for Landis & Gyr (pronounced Gear) back in 1997. That meter is called a Plugin meter supplied for Queensland. Made in Mt Waverley Victoria. Most the parts came from Switzerland.
@harrisonmorrow71722 жыл бұрын
It looks like the Queensland one (they do like the odometer) but it says "Energy Australia" on the face plate which means it came from NSW (Eastern/Northern Sydney to the Hunter Valley).
@MarcelHuguenin2 жыл бұрын
Great video Dave!
@Quazlyy2 жыл бұрын
Thanks for creating this video, I did my first internship at Siemens at the former Landiy & Gyr premises in Zug, Switzerland and it was interesting to see a part of the company's history
@ravenbarsrepairs55942 жыл бұрын
Here in the states, the box the meter is installed into is put in by the electrician, then once the electrical inspection is passed, the power company comes out and installs the meter. That's why the meter just plugs into the box.
@arendeepropertymaintenance2 жыл бұрын
More of them, Dave. That was a good one.
@alexindustries442 жыл бұрын
I always wandered about these meters ,and didnt found a good explanation until now, still they have a lot of mysteries to reveal ,thanks
@Newb1eYou_2 жыл бұрын
I love your Friendly nature 😊 Keep up the vids good sir!!!
@ianbottom73962 жыл бұрын
Your video gave me flashbacks to my time in the Meter & Test section of Prospect Electricity (Seven Hills depot) overhauling and calibrating meters similar to this one. The jewel bearings used to come in an applicator that released one at a time and were tiny. Anyway, enjoyed the video 👍
@bobcatt2294 Жыл бұрын
That multimeter has your logo on it (6:49) - OMG! THumbs up.
@kisupantteri2 жыл бұрын
I love how much stuff been thought for these meters :3
@michaelsdailylife85632 жыл бұрын
This was really neat Dave! I have always been curious how those analog meters worked!
@stefflus082 жыл бұрын
Interesting, an *anti* creep hole! Most holes attract creeps.
@ZaneDaMagicPufferDragon2 жыл бұрын
Lol 😂
@McTroyd2 жыл бұрын
Decades ago, when I was much younger, I tried to see if I could get that disc to spin fast enough to break the sound barrier. Unfortunately the only thing that broke the sound barrier was my father's temper, after seeing the electric bill that month. 😁 ⚡️
@jimomertz2 жыл бұрын
Awww…I was expecting you to test the accuracy of that meter. See if it was ripping people off in its past life. 😯
@invisiblekincajou2 жыл бұрын
"Made in Australia" by Siemens Interesting artefact.
@AintBigAintClever2 жыл бұрын
I remember someone who had a small hole in the bottom of his meter, with a paperclip up through the hole and caught through that disc hole to freeze the meter.
@freeman100002 жыл бұрын
I was a Meter reader until mid 2021 (Perth, Western Australia) and I never encountered that particular Meter.
@n2n8sda2 жыл бұрын
Used to be called buzz boxes here, a small transformer that was wired across the meter to slow or reverse the disc, many of the later meters had flags that popped out if the disc rotated in reverse as a visual display
@DrYeet27042 жыл бұрын
Ah yes, our old meter. When we got a quote to get a smart meter (which I was able to hack - good old software backdoors), the engineer said “Jesus, you didn’t tell me it was an old analog meter you had!”. That meter was installed when mainstream electricity first became available in our region and it had never been changed since then. We’ve still got that meter (not connected to mains, we’ve got it in a custom acrylic display case because of its history) because I love anything electrical and old/vintage.
@harrisonmorrow71722 жыл бұрын
Nothing like seeing a really old meter on a building.
@ddacombe47522 жыл бұрын
super interesting & thanks for sharing.
@DEtchells2 жыл бұрын
I might have missed it in the explanation, but the magnet doesn’t just keep the disc from spinning wildly, it’s actually part of the calculation itself(!) The disc multiplies the I and V components, resulting in a torque, and you’re right, if the magnet wasn’t there, the disc sound just keep accelerating. The drag induced by the magnet is *proportional to the speed of the disc* though, so a given amount of torque will translate into a specific speed of rotation. Voila, speed is proportional to V x I ! 😁
@RichardKinch2 жыл бұрын
I remember when they said electric power from nuclear would be plentiful and too cheap to meter.
@e74av2 жыл бұрын
In Serbia, one guy made a very small hole on the glass and put some dead bugs on to the disc, which made it jam little bit and turn slower 😎 they couldn't prove it was his fault as he was passing much less than he was suppose to 😂
@daic72742 жыл бұрын
Hmmm..holes don't usually appear in glass and I'm not aware of any bugs that can chew through glass. Couldn't have been inspected very well.
@e74av2 жыл бұрын
@@daic7274 well, they couldn't prove that it was his intentional damage 😂 so he got away with it.
@milohoffman2742 жыл бұрын
Hmm I guess you could simulate something that looked like a rock that was shot out of a lawn mower or something to impact the glass. A small rock and a slingshot would be the way to go.
@Tommyinoz19712 жыл бұрын
Did you install back into your electrical box without any trouble?
@bobert45222 жыл бұрын
Hey Dave, you actually don’t even have to disassemble the unit to pull it out of the receptacle. There’s a puller tool linemen use to pull it out as these things need replaced often enough to warrant it.
@Bianchi772 жыл бұрын
Vote up, nice video clip, thanks for sharing it :)
@jayjacob96212 жыл бұрын
This has probably already been answered in the hundreds of previous comments, but I believe the dimples are too help make the disc flat and rigid, and the brush marks may have to do with balancing of the disc. Thank you for another great video!
@amrishhirani60962 жыл бұрын
Merry Christmas 🎄 Thanks 👍
@mladen89ftn2 жыл бұрын
What you could do is make a small diameter hole through the plastic casing with a dentist drill or heated wire, place a small metal rod through that makes contact with the disc and slow it down that way. Just remember to remove it before they come to measure it and do not to get too greedy. For good measure, cover the meter in some dust so the whole is less visible ;)
@cbiz82 жыл бұрын
Excellent!!!
@m.cigledy67692 жыл бұрын
The box and plug design on these meters in the U.S. is a bit different. The way they are built it is physically possible to turn the meter upside down in the housing, which will make the meter run backwards (illegal, of course.)
@sonikempire2 жыл бұрын
You would love some old electric grid protection relays. All mechanical relays that protect lines, buses, transformers, etc. Distance, differential, over current and more. Many are still in service and still accurate to +-5%. Very similar to mechanical meters except for 50x more stuff packet into one.
@pe49582 жыл бұрын
Wow! Such engineeringing! Much scienceness!
@strangersound2 жыл бұрын
I love the transparency layer update to DaveCAD. You're really an analog guy, aren't ya? ;)
@antonmaier22632 жыл бұрын
The dimples are there because the plate can be pressed flatter with dimples than without. I don't know the proper technical term but it has to do with spring back when you bend a piece of metal into shape. I guess with dimples you get easier into plastic deformation.
@alch3myau2 жыл бұрын
Steady Eddy! What a legend.
@rosco46592 жыл бұрын
So much more to them than you would think.
@MarcosLucas2 жыл бұрын
Dude the amazing amount of balance you has to control ! I have one of those here on ARG, now we are using those digital rubbish.
@Ma_X642 жыл бұрын
Here in Russia we had quite different design of watt-hours itself but its discs has that stamped square dots too. It's definitely not a voluntarism of designers. I think they're works quite similar to how slits on unipolar machines discs works. Like optimizing paths of indused current. By the way, one of the most popular riddles today. Why does a unipolar machine generate exactly the same voltage if a round magnet rotates with its disk, as when the disk rotates, but the magnet does not.
@Ma_X642 жыл бұрын
@Liam but by the induction law it must be!) So this way when a magnet rotates along with a disc, EMF must not be generated but it does.
@marcinp.81082 жыл бұрын
It's interesting, how good it is for measuring low-pfc (in terms of current shape, not a passive power) units, like some LED bulbs. Some modern (electronic) units exhibits "gigantic" error here, as it was shown in one article (authors were from netherlands, afair).
@nicwilson892 жыл бұрын
'Some modern (electronic) units exhibits "gigantic" error here' Got any more info or a link for that? Sounds interesting
@marcinp.81082 жыл бұрын
@@nicwilson89 search for article "Static energy meter errors caused by conducted electromagnetic interference"
@eDoc20202 жыл бұрын
I think they would pretty good with accurately measuring power on abnormal current waveforms. It's abnormal _voltage_ waveforms I would be more concerned about.
@marcinp.81082 жыл бұрын
@@eDoc2020 But a current is a problem here, as voltage is usually well-shaped...
@lurkertech2 жыл бұрын
4:12 Why do the two magnetic fields (V * I) multiply together rather than add? The explanation later (5:16 and then later in the video) only explained about how the phase difference models the power factor, but not why the two fields multiply together to give us power V*I rather than adding V+I
@WacKEDmaN2 жыл бұрын
omhs law! .. P = V*I theres no such thing as V+I ..
@lurkertech2 жыл бұрын
@@WacKEDmaN No, that doesn't answer my question. I know that P = V*I. But in the video he said that the device calculates V*I. But why would having two magnetic fields overlapping multiply the fields? Shouldn't it add the fields instead? Looking for an explanation of why the device somehow calculates the multiple of V and I rather than summing them, so that it can compute the power correctly.
@RichardKinch2 жыл бұрын
The physics of combining magnetic flux components results in a vector dot product, not a sum.
@lurkertech2 жыл бұрын
@@RichardKinch Right, but why? It seems counter-intuitive. Know any good explanations of the physics?
@RichardKinch2 жыл бұрын
@@lurkertech Cf Maxwell's equations
@cuttingcut13212 жыл бұрын
Your meter can spin in reverse direction with readings decreasing due to it( you started with 79686 units, which fell to 79683 units). Didn't expect that from Siemens. In India, our electromechanical meters come with a mechanism which prevents reverse rotation of the disk
@imeprezime128511 ай бұрын
Our electromechanical meters can be rotated backwards. But only the DISC can while the readings can't,😊
@shmehfleh31152 жыл бұрын
I wonder if anyone has ever had a runaway meter result in a huge power bill for them.
@dusankoszeghy75702 жыл бұрын
Thank you for tearing that nice piece down for us. I remember we had a three phase one, much bigger and uglier:)
@christophersine84 Жыл бұрын
The holes in the disc are for testing, a laser is passed through the disk and you'll get a test pulse every time the laser passes through that hole. In the states, we perform three tests on meter. A full load test, a light load test, and a power factor test. Adjustments are made to the magnet in order to speed up and slow down the disc to calibrate the meter.