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Reverse your smart energy meter with this simple trick!

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Jeroen3:
So, apparently several Smart Energy Meters in the Netherlands read incorrect in certain conditions.
It was already established a few years ago that some LED lamps could cause some meters to read high.
However, today I found this, fool the smart meter in your advantage!

Research paper: How to Earn Money with an EMI Problem: Static Energy Meters Running Backwards.

News item (dutch): Gelderlander.

Apparently, Chris bought a dimming wireless socket from KlikAanKlikUit (a brand in the netherlands) and used it for his TV.

tldr: This caused significant current pulses at specific phase angles fooling the meter in thinking he was backfeeding power.
Some others meters increased the power reading.

Interesting find. Soon the dodgy technology "power savings plug" will contain power corruptors...

Halcyon:
Until they flash a firmware update over-the-air, rendering the "hack" useless.

Zero999:
It's also quite likely against the law.

Berni:
Is it still illegal if the meters are so crappy that a normal load with terrible power factor can cause it to read this wrong?

This is sort of like your ISP used a crappy bandwith limiter solution that would let you get 2x the amount of internet bandwidth if you sent packets with just the right packet size. Then they sue you for using more internet than they allowed you to use.

If they power company wants the accurate electricity usage reading, how about they pony up and buy some meters that actually work.

Alti:

--- Quote from: Jeroen3 on August 13, 2021, 07:26:45 am ---So, apparently several Smart Energy Meters in the Netherlands read incorrect in certain conditions.(..)
--- End quote ---
I'd say that every measurement instrument imaginable can only be expected to return results within conditions it has been designed and tested for. This not only applies to power meters.

In case of power meters the error bound (both plus and minus) is characterised but again, only in certain test conditions. Of course one cannot create test condition that includes "all possible current draw patterns" because a production test would have taken quite a long time then. Instead, a product is tested against standardised shape but you cannot infer from that the measurement error never exceeds boundaries - this has not been tested.

I suspect these meters are only designed to deal with EMC-compliant loads. Had someone used not-so-compliant load, the returned results could have included errors out of specified bounds.

Now the question is: is this a problem of a meter design and should any meter be robust against eBay jammers? Because then someone would have to prove non-existance of a pattern for which the error exceeds specified bounds.

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