Whats going on with Smart meters

[Rover]

How close are you to the satellite?

[Wolvenar]

As always, please feel free to point out where I am wrong

This is how I understand how supply voltage changes will effect overall usages

Messing with the voltages for them would need to be very selective, and many times will do minimal good unless they know exactly what the house load consists of.

If you lower the voltage the amperage draw will increase in anything but resistive loads in order to get the energy needed to run the device.
So for example..

A house with more devices containing switching power supplies, these will maintain all the required output voltages required for the device, however they need to draw more amperage from the supply line to do so. As devices draw more amperage, there is more lost to heat in the supply lines between the meter and the device. Raising the voltage can slightly improve efficiency here, as long as its withing the devices input voltage range.

Raising the voltages on a resistive load generally has a limited effect.
Take a coffee pot, or water heater as examples. The heating element in it will turn on draw slightly higher amperage, heat up faster.. then shut down at the desired temperature. Sure it draws more while it is on, but it also gets to target temperature quicker, so the effect is minimal. The biggest drawback is this might shorten the devices lifetime to raise the voltage. Lowering the voltage might cause things like the need to replace lights ( incandescent ) to higher draw ones to compensate for the lowered light conditions.. Or sizing up water heaters etc. So a lowered voltage in time may cause a higher draw in time because of the need to compensate.

Either of the above show a very limited effect if the supply lines are short and built with extra capacity over what your drawing.

Inductance loads.. (motors etc )
These generally always draw more some will draw a LOT more power, some will not change much at all, all depending on what it is and how much it's doing. But these almost always become less efficient as the supply conditions stray from the designed specs.

So depending on your devices in each home.. the raising or lowering of the voltage might not do much, and the effect is becoming less all the time as more devices are built with stepper style or servo motors. ( front load washers, newer dishwashers certain high efficiency multi voltage fridges).

[Wolvenar]

Isaiah

First of all (unless you *are* using a satellite phone) they do not talk to satellites.

They talk to (many) terrestrial towers.
Now as far as how much power is reaching you from the tower.. Well think about this, you are being bombarded 100% of the time from thousands of rf sources. Every radio,tv station every cell phone, tower, and every satellite that are aimed to your part of the country, then add in the sun and cosmic sources.

Your cell phone is mostly a passive receiving device when receiving from the tower(s) it is talking to. It does not build any special path, though it may have a very very small ionization area around it. When I say small, I mean  small you probably get a much higher ionization effect by walking around in wool stockings.

Ok lets remove the almost to small to measure rf from the cell phones hetrodyne circuits for a moment to consider in another way what this means.

The effects of holding a cell phone in such theoretical purely receive mode, are virtually the same as if you do not have a cell phone any where near you. Any random piece of wire can be tuned to a frequency of a transmitter near you, and such would be the same as a cell phone receiving from that source. Depending on distances involved, sitting there reading this, your computer, monitor, lights, and the timing circuits in the keyboard you type on may be a higher source of rf than you are getting from that tower.

Are you getting more paranoid yet?

This stuff has been researched for many decades in order to understand how to built more efficient, effective devices.
Researchers and people in the field have a good understanding of how to predict these powers, and this is verified by real life observations.
The formulas to predict and compair radiation sources have been known a long time, and I can tell you for fact, a cell phone tower presents  little to no more health problems than the TV tower of the 1950's

Living things deal with this stuff all of the time, today its almost impossible to escape the man-made radiation sources.
Life has dealt with the cosmic sources of all sorts of radiation, and were probably influenced by them ever since life existed in this universe.

As a result biology has built certain resistances to such radiation, giving us the ability to handle a considerable amount of exposure.

[frackers]

This thread reminds me of a news item that the BBC ran some 10-15 years ago about the placing of a cell tower on the roof of a school in south London

The news team turned up with RF field strength measuring equipment to 'prove' that the cell tower was dangerous (not at all biased!!) but they hit a problem with the Crystal Palace TV transmitter (used for BBC TV transmissions) that could be seen in the background some 2 miles away. The field strength in the playground from the TV transmitter even at 2 miles was 100 times that from the cell tower on the roof.

Why so large a difference? Well:
the TV transmitter was running 450,000 watts
the cell tower was running 20watts
the TV transmitter was sending the signal low to the ground so that the TV aerials on peoples houses would get the signal OK.
the cell tower aerial was projecting the signal horizontally from the roof level - it didn't need any blasted straight downwards towards the playground but was designed to hit the ground 1/2 a mile away to keep efficiency high

Twas an interesting item

[ghurd]

As always, please feel free to point out where I am wrong

OK, I will!   

You might be thinking in overly under voltage, like stall?
Going from 108VAC to 136VAC would not be a huge difference in most items operational characteristics.

"Inductance loads.. (motors etc )
These generally always draw more some will draw a LOT more power, some will not change much at all"
Yup, mostly.
Now consider this... my house... right now.
Laptop (switcher power supply, drawing 40~60W? I dunno), 2 x 11W CFLs, a 13W CFL, a few phantom loads (doorbell and furnace transformers, 2 cordless phone wallwarts, remote controlled CRT TV, etc).

Then the gas furnace kicks on for 5 minutes?  Then the fridge, then the meat freezer?
It won't take long before a day's worth of a laptop use is passed by a few minutes of motors running.

Back to "These generally always draw more" (amps).
120V to 136V.  13.333% more volts?
13.333% more amps too? (probably not, usually)
28% increase in the bill?
Less % lost in transmision?
More % billed to the user?
More profit.

Bulbs will draw about the same current.  That's still a 13% increase in billable sales.  Same postage, secretary, bookkeeper, paper, envelopes, etc.
More sales = More profit

A Prof I had back in the day was previously a Big Shot EE at GE in the '70s.
He laid out a dishwasher schematic, specified with "110VAC" incandescent indicator bulbs, as was the general term of the day.
The underlings paniced.  They only had 120VAC rated bulbs.  They set up a production run of 110VAC bulbs.
It turns out 120VAC bulbs are designed to run at the 136VAC in ticky-tacky housing developements where the 'loaded' voltage of a neighborhood could vary widely.  Almost unloaded at 10AM to almost overloaded at 5:30PM?
BUT (in EE talk) 110VAC bulbs are NOT designed for that much voltage.
After about 10 gazzillion dollars in waranty repairs, the big shot EE was a Prof at the university.  Guessing thats a pay grade reduction or 2?  LOL
I swear, the guy was dumb as a stump.
G-

(yes, I ignored power factor)

PS - Frackers,
In the analog cell days, I used to work a lot in the boonies.
There is an itersection with 2~3 cell towers by different companies.
At the intersection, there was NO signal!
(link is an experiment, mostly)
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&rlz=1R2TSHB_en&biw=1210&bih=613&q=intersection+OF+528+and+oh+87&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl

[Isaiah]

 well for the cell phone people here the forum police say i must start another topic so look  for cell phone safety
 i will start another as it is a letter from my local electric co but dose not pertain to smart meters
 isaiah

[Wolvenar]

Yes ghurd I was talking about voltages considered in the "brownout" area 80 to that 108.. Though things may work, its not good.. At one time we saw that kind out power trouble on a regular basis, thankfully not any more and not for a long time.