Mark Carver wrote:
I read some gumf the other day, saying Arqiva are rolling out a comms
system for Smart Water meters (it's the meters that are presumably
smart, not the water)

What is a smart meter, have I already got one ? The present one has
some sort of RFID functionality I assume, coz the van from South East
Water drives up our road, emitting a signal, that causes the meters to
'ping' back their readings ?

So, are these meters going to be the same ones used for the smart
metering, or will they come and change my meter (for the third time in
10 years now !)
And if they are the same ones, how on earth will the magic 10 megawatt
ERP signal from Arqiva reach my meter that's 600mm below the ground ?

Meters can be tied together. One scheme, allows a dumb meter, to
piggyback off the radio of a smart meter. A cable would run from
the dumb meter, to the smart meter in that case.

*******

Our water here, using the RFID concept. An especially strong "ping" from
the truck as it drives by, causes the meter to transmit a "usage packet"
back to the truck. The meter is battery powered, and the battery needs
replacement every ten years.

Since the water meter stays in a low power state, most all of the time,
the ten year battery interval is really the "shelf life". Counting pulses
at extremely low rates, uses no power to speak of.

Now, my meter it is claimed, has "leak detection", which implies at the
very least, some notion of time in the metering. And including a measure
of time would waste power. I've never heard of anyone getting a warning
on their water bill, that "something is leaking". This would not be
real-time detection, more a delay of a month or two, to find out. The
radio on the unit, cannot be heard by anything, otherwise. Only the
truck driving by can "hear it".

When the toilet valve was leaking, there was no notification on any bill.
I detected that by watching the visual meter dial one day, and seeing
the fastest moving spindle, "pipping a bit". Then I went hunting for
the miscreant. So if there is leak detection, I'm still waiting for
a demo.

Paul