Doug Kerr
Well-known member
Electrical energy is a major "fuel" of most households and businesses, and many automobiles. The watthour meter is the silent "tallyman" that tots up our electrical energy consumption, so we can pay the electric energy utility company for the energy it provides. And perhaps in the case of homes with individual solar photovoltaic electrical energy systems, connected to the electrical "grid", the meter may report a net export of energy to the electrical energy utility so it can pay us for it (or "bank it", in the accounting sense, as energy for our future use at no cost to us).
For many years the normal watthour meter was electromechanical, with a very clever electric motor whose speed is proportional to the instantaneous power passing through it. Its revolutions are totted up on a mechanical register, most often with four or more little dials with pointers, but sometimes with an odometer-like display.
Today, this type of watthour meter has been essentially superseded (and in many case, replaced) by a wholly-electronic meter, with a digital display. Yet, for physical interchangeability reasons, these are still housed in the same kind of glass "fishbowl" as were the common style of the electromechanical watthour meters.
Here we see a fine example of the latter, a Centron Itron Type C1S, Class 200 meter:
Douglas A. Kerr: Watthour meter 101
This is employed as the "production meter" on the solar electrical energy system at our home in Alamogordo. New Mexico. Its duty is to tot up the energy produced by the solar system, which drives various incentives available to the power utility for making it possible for part of the energy use of the community to come from "renewable sources", in this case, from solar radiation. We see it as recording the first 14 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy generated by the solar system, not long after after the system had been put "on line".
The legend "NET" on the display tells us that this meter has been configured so that it will count either up or down depending on the direction of energy flow through it. That is not significant for this meter; the energy through it, always being from the solar system, is always "positive". But this is now the universal standard configuration for residential meters for this power utility, and would suit it for use as the "net" meter at a house with a solar electrical energy system. In fact, the net meter here (the one that affects our bill from the power utility) is of exactly the same type (and has been in place for about two years). But its reading does not have the significance of the reading of the one shown!
I invite all of you to post your best art photography work of watthour meters that you think a curator might accept for an exhibition in a fine art gallery.
And Happy New Year (Common Era basis) to all.
Best regards,
Doug
For many years the normal watthour meter was electromechanical, with a very clever electric motor whose speed is proportional to the instantaneous power passing through it. Its revolutions are totted up on a mechanical register, most often with four or more little dials with pointers, but sometimes with an odometer-like display.
Today, this type of watthour meter has been essentially superseded (and in many case, replaced) by a wholly-electronic meter, with a digital display. Yet, for physical interchangeability reasons, these are still housed in the same kind of glass "fishbowl" as were the common style of the electromechanical watthour meters.
Here we see a fine example of the latter, a Centron Itron Type C1S, Class 200 meter:
Douglas A. Kerr: Watthour meter 101
The legend "NET" on the display tells us that this meter has been configured so that it will count either up or down depending on the direction of energy flow through it. That is not significant for this meter; the energy through it, always being from the solar system, is always "positive". But this is now the universal standard configuration for residential meters for this power utility, and would suit it for use as the "net" meter at a house with a solar electrical energy system. In fact, the net meter here (the one that affects our bill from the power utility) is of exactly the same type (and has been in place for about two years). But its reading does not have the significance of the reading of the one shown!
I invite all of you to post your best art photography work of watthour meters that you think a curator might accept for an exhibition in a fine art gallery.
And Happy New Year (Common Era basis) to all.
Best regards,
Doug
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