Bad Science. Making your electricity meter run backwards.
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- Опубліковано 29 гру 2015
- This video is presented for its technical merit only. Do NOT attempt to do this. Modern meters will flag tampering like this, and the actual act carries a high risk of electrocution or burns.
In the dark past, devices called "retarders" were sold on the black market from shady vendors in pubs, from car boots and from under dodgy market stalls. These devices were indiscriminately sold to non-technical people by equally non technical people to make their meters run backwards. The idea was that you hooked this thing up to your meter by jamming wires up its terminals, and it could be used to wind your meter backwards to reduce your electricity bill.
The downside (and it's quite a big one) is that the units were not really suited for non technical people and if you either put the wires in the wrong place or connected them in the wrong sequence, you would either end up getting a shock or severely burned, with the possibility of taking out the supply authorities fuse - or even the whole street.
These things were also quite severe in the current they passed through the meter, and would often leave scorch marks on the terminals, burn the insides, or in the case of misconnection, completely destroy the meter. All things the supply company would look for when you opened the door to them while whimpering quietly with the charred remnants of your skin falling off your hands.
Latterly devices to detect this activity were added to meters in the form of non-resettable flags that would move out if the meter ran in the wrong direction, or in the case of digital meters a tamper indicator. - Наука та технологія
Back when I was a kid one of my friend’s dads used to sell these that was until he started working away from home. Years later I realised why he was working away from home!
+andrew mcneil Working away from home behind prison walls I take it? :P
+twocvbloke yep sewing mail bags and digging ditches ;-)
+andrew mcneil It's amazing how many Dads used to "work away at the Durham oil rig" - Durham doesn't have an oil rig, but it does have a very large prison...
....must have saved the prison a fortune in electric! :D
Was he in jail?
I installed one for my mate many years ago and run the "Wizzer" through a fuse in the dis board so it could be turn off when the meter was read, Never made the meter run backwards but it slowed it right down. Also got a belt off the earth wire for my troubles.
Big Thumbs Up.
Since it is illegal to do this, i will put it this way: i might have heard of a guy who had in his house that type of meter.
The problem always was the physical access to the "live in" wire, the meter is sealed by the electricity company, and that guy had a problem getting past the seals, once he was able to get past the seals, he just reversed the "live in" with the "live out" wire and the meter was counting backwards. The points are: 1 - it works with and without the box, 2 - you can just reverse the wires, you don't need that mambo jumbo.... you get the same amount of jail time, either way.... :))))
Knew someone in Lanarkshire who tried this back in the 90s. Wound back too far and had to spend 500 on bad heaters to bring the dials forward before the lekky board broke his door in.
That moment your new reading is lower than your old one and the meter reader looks slightly suspicious..
You'd have to be pretty dumb for doing it that way. :P
I was thinking that if I were going to swindle my power company (although I wasn't an adult in the era when it was possible), I'd use a device that made my meter go forwards slower, rather than go backwards. Or, I'd just look at my former reported number, and before reporting, decide on how much power I'd "used", and rewind the meter to roughly that amount.
+Alexander Krivács Schrøder there indeed was a device, the method involved a hot needle, melting a tiny hole in the side aligned with the metal rotating disc, and then a peice of wire with a small weight on the end, poked in the hole, it stopped the disc rotating, and thus the expense.
+jusb1066 - Many of the old electromechanical meters were in a glass housing, thus drilling a hole, especially a tiny hole, would have been impractical.
*****
not in the UK! they were bakelite hoisings
Years ago I had a pre-pay electric meter. Happy New Year BTW. Anyway, the meter refused to cut out when the credit was at zero. It just made a terrible clunk noise every few minutes. I contacted the electric company and the nice lady on the end of the phone informed me that my meter was fitted with a "clunk device" and assured me that all was well. "well um err. ok".
When I moved out I got a bill for about £500. Naturally this seemed odd, when I had a pre-payment meter. I had to go a bit postal on them, so they didn't get the £500.
Obviously, there was a fault, but it was them that refused to come and fix the damned thing. "Clunk device" my A.
LOL They probably had a municipal agreement to not turn you off abruptly. And while the meter was probably capable of turning off immediately, they were using it with a 'clunk' device so that it only made a noise rather than actually switching off. I am surprised they didn't come after you with a bill collector for the amount you used in excess of the pre-payment...plus collection costs.
Used to slip a strip of plastic into an old ferranti meter years ago with the end folded back... stopped the wheel turning and the digits, got me a couple of winters free heat in the early 90's.
Some used to disconnect gas meters, hook up a vacuum cleaner to pull the meter in reverse.
Actually I did hear about that once I do some way to work for an old gas company years and years and years and years ago before the modern times vote results stories he worked for various utility companies and other interesting and wonderful things unfortunately passed away when I was younger still remember the stories should share in this comments if I can remember them
My friend did this in a student house using a bit of plastic negative film. Problem was it broke off inside, and the negative file had photos of him on it. Try talking your way out of that one :-)
@@sdpryce I know a certain PM who could talk his way out,no trouble.
Back in the 1970's I stayed a few days with some students in Oxford in the middle of Winter. I was briefly dating a girl who was staying in the house they jointly rented together. Outside it was freezing but the house was incredibly warm. I saw oil storage heaters and three bar electric fires everywhere in the place.
Over dinner I asked them how the heck they could afford to heat the place so well. "Oh, we don't pay for our electricity," someone said. "How come?" I asked, expecting to be told Social Security paid for it or something. I was led to the meter cupboard just inside the front door of this huge house. I noticed straight away that the meter wheel was not turning and there was a little cover missing from the place the where the terminals connected under the meter. Stuck between the two red terminals was a thick piece of wire forming a bridge and by passing the meter. The student who showed me this also showed me a small metal thing that looked like a tiny door catch. He explained that you simply had to undo a small screw to let that catch drop down and touch the other contacts below. Then hook up the by pass wire and you got free electricity.
The little hatch that was normally screwed in place on the terminal connector had a couple of wires that passed through it and which terminated in a lead alloy seal. They had picked away at the back of the seal until the wires could be pulled carefully out of the little trench they dug in the rear of the seal and the hatch opened. They told me that when the meter man was due, they simply put everything back to normal and replaced the seal then they pinched the seal together to hold the wire so it would look from the front as if it had never been disturbed. Then they ran the meter at full tilt for a few days to get the readings up. They even blew dust onto everything to complete the deception. He told me it had been that way for three years.
I was blown away by the cleverness of it but lacked the nerve to try it myself. No doubt about it though. It worked.
😁 Thats Jutice 4 ya! 😁
In the very late 70's or early 80's a friend showed me one of these that his Dad had brought home but wasn't sure how to use. I was the only person he knew with any electrical knowledge (and a multimeter) and was also curious as I heard they sold for decent money. When I metered out the terminals I discovered the direct path from live to earth so told him it was faulty and dangerous and obviously advised them not to use it. As I was not much more than a spotty teenager they decided to ignore my advice and try it anyway. I only heard rumours about what happened but the incident sparked quite a lot of arguing and fighting when the Dad tried to get his money back and also tried to claim for damages from the guy who sold it to him ! Apparently the local Electricity Board and the Police were involved and also a hospital and a courtroom and as it was a Council property the local Council got in on it too !
I have a 4Kw solar power system and digital meters, the supplier meter displays the word ReD regularly to identify negative current has flown through the meter at some time, as I have sola power this is "classed as normal" and the power generated is recorded on a separate meter. Always enjoy the videos.
I have a 4Kw system and an analogue meter, let's just say my net usage isn't much!
I knew someone who put one on forgot about it the meter ran so far back he had to put every thing in the house on full before the next reading
Back when I was on the tools I occasionally came across customers houses running on a "Dropped Link Tariff". Wonder if their are any of those metres still about?
The worst electricity thieves wired one power hungry circuit in before the meter bypassing the fuse board. That "trick" cost me more than one set of cutters. It also taught me to always assume everything is live until it's proved dead. I preferred it when you could just pull the fuse out of the board and put it in your pocket.
I used to fit electric meters & the most common way of fiddling the meter was a bridge from live in to live out.... Came across one fiddler that had completely disconnected the meter & was running a piece of 5 amp flex from the cutout to a socket that was then powering the flat/apartment... The worst part was that there was a young girl in the flat with a toddler running around & she was ironing from the same socket & the flex that was running diagonally across the room had WASHING pegged to it... I wish we had mobiles with camera's in those days?... PS... They used to show us gruesome pictures of fingers, hands & arms that had been blown off when the meter reader was about to call & they'd grab their bridge & it shorted out... A few dead people too
Bb bg
My parents and their friends have told me numerous times of a trick that could be performed on some analogue "spinning disk" meters that where used in Sydney, Aust. back in the 70's-00's.
All you had to do was go behind the DB panel, which was hinged pegboard with a gate latch holding it closed, no lock and disconnect the ground wire from the meter. Simple as that, it stops counting :)
There was even a recommended pattern for switching it so the services wouldn't suspect anything :D
I kinda admire these stories and people... Right up there with watching the neighbours cable (pay) TV, :D hahaha
The old U.K meter I think you are talking about used to have a gap between the top meter reading and the spinning disc, this had the perfect gap for a laminated I.D card which when inserted just stopped the dial turning. You just had to remember to pull it out before they got read.
I think here in Holland at least, when you've got your own power source (like a solar panel) and you're not using any power (or you're using less than the panel provides), the meter spins backwards (but slowly) and it's completely legal and allowable and all that.
But I'm not sure, especially now with those new digital meters. I could be completely wrong :)
+thany3 I think it would be a different more complex metering system that you'd get that would account for solar and wind power that you feed back. But they wouldn't allow you to feed back from a gasoline generator either.
Siana Gearz
Yes, well, I'm sure it's regulated. I'm sure only a certified electrician is allowed to install the feedback, and can therefor check if the source is of sufficient quality to do so. A petrol engine probably doesn't fall into that category :)
What if you unplug your house from the grid and just use solar
If your meter runs backwards then you're just exporting back to the grid
@@ausintune9014 Then if you can run your home on solar only? You wont have to pay any dodgy power companies :)
Happy New Year, Clive!
Guess it is just about 2016 in the UK now. Still five hours of 2015 left to go here...
In sections of Phiadelphia, Pennsylvania, the electric mains wires are run across the backs of the row houses. Some are within easy reach from windows, decks or low roofs. Folks just scrape off some insulation and clip on jumper cables to divert some current for appliances or the whole house. The electric utility knocks down about 5,000 of these per year.
my friend's house had a hole in the meter through which they used to insert a straightened out safety pin to jam the mechanism to halt it. in the end, the meter reading guy came when the pin was inserted and they got caught. their meter was replaced by a digital one
"Not a good idea these days" Well considering how terribly illegal it is and that the power company will estimate what you stole and charge you not only for that but for replacing the meter and tampering in general, on top of how dangerous these were I'd say it's always been a bad idea.
you could do the same with gas meters (analogue ones). unbolt both nuts, turn meter round & reconnect & hey presto, it went backwards as you used gas, used to use a sock on the nuts so it didn't mark the brass nuts.
Let me guess that's a really really old meter I saw old ones like that once or twice probably in a utility Museum. Yes they exist the Museum's I'm fascinated by all things mechanical electrical engineering you name it what there was once younger on a three trip to somewhere else.
Whenever I watch one of your videos, I feel smarter but don't understand a thing.
+Skelly Things will fall into place over time. It's like a jigsaw. It gets easier as you fit all the bits together.
bigclivedotcom Thanks mate. :)
Just meant it as a bit of a joke though. :P
Still, nice to see some friendly words in the comments for the first time in a century. :P
here in serbia we just put a big magnet ontop of the meter and thats it done ... every electrictian know this
you actually got dumber, just felt smarter. I put a Neo mag under mine stops it dead, but every meter is differant
That must be why I meet so many successful Serbian electricians here in the States...
Hey can you make more videos on messing around with the electricity meter. This was really interesting and informative
I remember in the 80's the NEEB Electricity Board shop had massive posters about these devices and how deadly they were.
Not surprising at all.
The US equivalent of this... you could just pull the meter out of the base and re-insert it upside-down... and the meter would go backwards.
@@mernok2001 I don't know if this is real or not I once heard somewhere about people that would bypass the door meters buy sticky man backwards upside-down in the words and the power come back on even if there was shut off remotely you know early smart meters just something I think it was a UA-cam video about people stealing power or something.
That sounds like a right laugh, especially the bit where after blowing up the meter the home owner would need to answer lots of difficult questions asked by the electrician sent out to repair the mess.
I saw one of those police programs where a house had been converted into a giant drug farm. The enterprising weed growers had bypassed the meter using thick pieces of bare copper shoved into the terminals.
Streetlamp outside my house exploded once. Nothing to do with me, somehow the cables feeding it shorted out under the street.
Took the council a day to work out where the cables ran, then they dug up the whole street to trace the cable.
Nah, street lights are usually run on high voltage, hooked up in series. So you wouldn't get a constant voltage off them, if you wired your house in parallel with one. It'd depend heavily on the load. Not suitable for domestic use.
They have these interesting exploding bypass things for when a bulb goes. Same principle xmas lights work on, actually, but quite a bit higher voltage.
In Poland there was that trick with Neodymium magnet that when connected to the meter slowed it down by much (though when disconnected it made meter run faster than it should). I have no idea how that worked, but apparently it did.
Question !!!
If you have access at the Live before going in the meter why not get that directly at the distribution board and have free non metered power ?
I guess cos it'd look funny if someone came round, where with this cheating device, you could run it for a few hours, reverse your meter, then take it off and nobody would suspect.
If you had a TN-C-S system with no RCD's present, what would happen if you swapped the main earth and neutral cables inside your fuseboard? Would your lights and appliances still work because the neutral and earth are linked? Also, assuming that older meters use both the neutral and live conductors to read your usage in Kilowatt hours, would this stop your meter from turning?
Smartmeters in the US are bi-directional communicating meaning they can be read and controlled via a computer and radio in the truck.
With that said one can capture a data burst from their meter, modify the packets payload and transmit it when the meter truck drives by. Sounds like quite a feat but definitely possible if your good with that sort of thing.
+ElfNet Gaming Some tried that in germany with an internet connected smart meter. The smart metter has some odd features like a live graph of the power usage via browser. It was easy enough to fake packets and thus even write words in the live graph. The server of the energy provider was not fully stupid - it took the highest value send as the current sum of power used. But still there is potential: Night energy is cheaper, so just bill what you need for day during night.
They used encrypted data, additionally ours (in Canada) use the CDMA network to communicate back. Technically if you could break into one and find out the IEMI of the meter you might be able to replicate it somehow.
+CreativeType imsi catcher and a sort of MiTM attack ?
+ElfNet Gaming - They don't use a truck to collect meter readings. The electric and gas smart meters are linked together in a low-power mesh network and they pass encrypted data packets from meter to meter like a bucket brigade until the packets eventually make their way to the utility company. In rural areas where the meters are spaced too far apart to communicate with low power radio signals, they transmit the data via the power lines, and I've read that this causes radio interference problems for some people. Some of the smart meters have built-in relays to turn the power on and off remotely; they don't even send personnel out anymore. I saw this in action at a property I manage, where I had missed a couple of payments and arrived one day to find no electricity on the premises. I called the utility, made a credit card payment over the phone, and within 45 minutes the power was on again. They can't do that with gas (yet).
In the town where I live, the water meters are being converted to use the same mesh network technology. They used to have a couple of trucks to drive around and the driver would stick a wand out to touch the transducer on each meter to get the readings. Then, they got it so the truck would just drive down the street, and the next phase is elimination of the trucks altogether, with the meters reporting back to the public works department almost on an hour-by-hour basis.
***** Not all power companies are the same, We are on AEP and they drive a truck through once a month. Same for gas and water but that's how it is here, this id because not every place has a smart meter and they need to manually read them.
Our power, gas and water are three separate entities also so none of them are linked together in any form in fact the gas busts data on 452 MHz while the power does it on 920 MHz and water on 159 MHz.
Yeah I took the time to capture the packets and read them, I was bored.
When I worked at BT I did an earth resistance test with a special tester that should not tripout the trip, but it did and the customer lost data on their computer. When I reset the trip and removed the tester, I saw the meter was running backward. Their was no sign of tempering and to this day I cannot work out what was wrong.
Why would you bother with this contraption when you could just have shorted live in to live out with a bus bar and have the meter stand still (or at least spin much slower)?
Because that's how you die
Ausintune Do you, though? If you're naturally careful around high voltage, you could pull this off. Then it'd be simply a matter of your supply company noticing the power consumption anomaly.
It's still spinning at the same speed, even if you connect the Lin with Lout. :)
Very interesting I always wanted to know how those things worked Clive , thanks
Wouldnt it be fun if they'd let Clive inside one of the old bbc license detector vans to debunk them ! :)
+jusb1066
They got debunked a long time ago, this is why the paedophile loving BBC marxists no longer claim to use them. Anyone that still pays for a TV license deserves to have their home carpet bombed by the yanks.
Not sure if the vans actually did anything, but Van Eck phreaking is a real thing which allows remote detection (and even viewing) of images on screens.
+John Smith If you ever put a transistor radio next to an old school TV set then recoiled at the screaming noise you got from the radio, you'd immediately understand that TV detector vans were definitely feasible. The old style analogue TVs were a mess of oscillators driving high voltage conductors, and making plenty of radio noise that anyone with a suitable antenna could pick up.
Of course, just the threat of the TV detector vans in the district would be enough to frighten most people in to complying, even if the vans never showed up.
BTW, I do hope you never find out the hard way that today's TV detector vans actually do work!
*****
Oh the vans showed up alright. I used to see them driving around in the 80's and 90's. However there have been many people who used to drive them that have now came forward and said that the vans were empty. I don't doubt such equipment was feasible but they simply weren't used, as any information they could obtain wouldn't stand up in a court of law due to UK privacy laws.
All they can do in reality is get the homeowner to sign a statement which is an admission of guilt. In the very rare cases where they apply for and get a warrant, the police will usually be in attendance simply to ensure there is no breach of the peace from either party, and you are still not obliged to let them in as they can't force entry. I've been battling them for almost a decade now.
+John Smith The private company that collects the TV licence for the BBC tends to rely on bullying and intimidation to get people to pay the licence even if they do not use a TV. A lot of the misinformation they put out is completely wrong and intended to scare people into paying. You only need to pay for a TV licence if you watch BBC programs live as they are being transmitted.
One of the techniques they use to check up on people is to phone and pretend to be a market research company. During the call there will be a moment of silence, during which they use a high gain amplifier to listen to the sound in your house to see if a BBC program is being watched live. If that fails they will then ask some "market research" questions regarding upcoming films or other things that you may only have known about by watching a BBC program. They will then ask how you found out about them, with the intent of getting you to say "I saw it on the telly". All totally underhand and very intrusive. I guess some politicians must be getting a cut though.
I remember a few years back when i was at school, my cousins friend had a card meter in his flat... he had rigged it in such a way I never thought possible. All he had done was stuck one end of a brass coat hanger (he had the middle wrapped with about 10 rolls of electric tape lol) into the hole with the live input of the box and the other end on the output.... you could easily tell it had been tampered with if you took the hanger out but I don't think he ever gone done for it. I'm surprised he never fried himself or the flat, I thought the brass would have melted?
Hi. Thanks a Lot for Thais vídeo. The Transformer 127/240 v in primary and 12v 2A,5A secondary? What the better Transformer to makes? Bests regards.luiz
Hmm, years ago, an uncle did something similar to the meter in the house. I'm sure it was essentially a copper wire wedged in LIn/Lout.
Cue coming down the stairs to find the thing on fire and putting it out through the medium of beating the flames out, 6 hours without power and parents swearing
What if you just shunted the meter out? Like sticking a wire across the Lin / Lout terminals, but still allow the meter to measure a small amount of current?
I made one of these things back in the early nineties.
But rather than connecting the earth to some random pipe, I just connected it straight to the earth loop circuit.
I noticed that it would spin backwards only under very light or no load.
If there was a substantial load like electric cooker and water heater, the meter wouldn't spin backwards but would simply slow down its forward rate of rotation.
I through the thing away after I suffered an accidental but quite severe shock.
You see, I had soldered a pair of darning needles on to each end of the live conductors and it was these that I used to ram up in to the meter where the mains supply goes in.
One time as I was pushing upwards my hand slipped up off the insulated part to touch the live part of the needle that was by then wedged in tight.
I was wearing suede soled moccasin slippers, standing on a damp dirt floor in the cellar.
I remember the blinding pain but the worse thing was my hand grabbed hard onto the needle, and I couldn't let go.
I managed to jump backwards and so was able to detach myself from my peril but the experience frightened me so much that I never did it again.
In fact, it was such a big shock that to this day I am really surprised that I wasn't electrocuted.
But it was a close call, let me tell you.
>
Fascinating.
I'm quite naive with fiddling things but had heard about them. One house I lived in was in a dodgy part of Northumberland. The meter inspectors would come almost fortnightly despite me using a key meter.
After I think 6 visits I realised what they were up to - literally checking every orofice in my meter for suspicious damage. I blew my stack on that last visit and never saw them again!
I'd always thought that an easier way to do this would be to simply wedge two brass (but insulated) rods into the meter input terminals with wires going to my own separate fuse box and extension leads.
Not long after I thought of that one the electricity board sent engineers round to all houses here and added a length of extra insulation to where the feed cables go into the meter. It effectively blocked access to those live parts and stopped me adding the spare fuse box..
one way to get away with electrical stealing is being secret and not trusting anyone...because your household is private until the suspect it...
I bought an old meter and built one, just to prove to myself that it did work.
I took an old 240v transformer and put a few windings on the secondary and didn't use the lethal copper pipe, I took it to earth. Yes it did go backwards at the same rate power was being used at, maybe we used the exact amount of windings that was needed by chance.
However, not being pleased it was tried just for a few seconds and it did work. I wouldn't recommend anyone does this. It is highly dangerous and it is theft. There was a spell where these things were sold up here and there were a few people went to court for it, rightly so, it costs the rest of us to have others stealing power. I came across a lot of meters that had a glass or perspex bubble over the meters, so it was not hard to work who had been caught.
Highly dangerous thing to do, even if you know what you are doing, there is no protection if anything goes wrong.
Why do you used the secondary why not the primary.
@@johncockram248 It's a bit complicated but simple at the same time. The primary winding winding you took from the live coming in and (now it was a long time ago I did this, but here goes. Have to say I never did it to steal power from the electricity company) a and connected it to power coming in. The secondary had a few windings on it (it you experimented you could stop the meter while you used power, or slowed it down a lot) took a link to the coil with the few windings on it from the primary and put the other of the secondary to the out power from the meter. Then there was an earth went to the earth by the meter. I never used a copper pipe, if something went wrong your pipes would go live! hey should be earthed, but, well sometimes, especially on old buildings they might not be. Depending on how much windings you put on the secondary would speed up or slow down the meter. It is highly dangerous and modern meters (even the old type, but more up to date ones) would po out a little flag to tell the man that reads the meter that it had been running backwards. There would be very few old meters around these days. They went through a phase of replacing them with ones that looked the same but popped out little flag to tell them you were stealing power. They also fitted new cables to newer installations where the tails going to the meter and back were double insulated and this meant they could push the tail right into the meter so you couldn't get anything up between the insulated wire (tail) and the meter wall without leaving tale tale marks on the cable, no mater if you put them up the back or not, it was easy to spot. Meter readers were trained to spot tampering with the meter and it would be reported back later for a hit squad to visit and try to catch you at it or to examine the meter and they would then fit a bubble over it so it could not be tampered with again. Than you went to see a Judge for a hefty slap on the wrists!
If you study Clive's drawing, and realise the secondary has been removed and rewound with a few windings or heavy copper wire you can easily work out the rest. Don't use a copper pipe as an earth! That is asking for trouble. In fact the whole thing is asking for trouble and I would not encourage anyone to do it, It is just for information purposes only. I do not condone this activity. If you do this it is at your own risk and and might quite possibly kill you! SO DO NOT TRY THIS. 2:09 shows you the complete circuit.
@@BoB4jjjjs wow does seem quite complicated the one I saw years ago was a battery charger with just 2 red wires coming out that you pushed up on the meter and that was it you did not need to plug anything into a socket.
@@johncockram248 No socket involved, all that would have been in the battery charger is what I built and Clive describes.
It is not complicated when you see it, Clive just said he would have taken it to a socket just to be a bit safer.
All it is is one wire goes from the n side of the meter to the primary, linked to the Rewound secondary to the other side of the meter and the other end of the primary goes to earth. It is very simple when you see it built. But very dangerous as there are live parts on the transformer exposed. They put them in a black plastic box and potter them so people couldn't work out what was inside. This made it slightly safer, however, you still had to put probes/wires into the meter the right way or it could catch fire. or kill you. Connect earth first as the earth wire would be live until you earthed it. One wire each side of the meter and one wire to earth. By the way, if you put it the wrong way round but on both live in and out but the wrong way round, the meter would speed up instead. You had three wires, one for connecting to the live into the meter, one for the live out of the meter and one to earth. If you built it into a box it was a bit safer, but only slightly, remember both probes and earth wire would be live when the first wire is connected. Earth first, live out, then live in. I DO NOT RECOMMEND TRYING IT.
Could I send you a diagram of what I have done. See if right.
Yea in the us i understand they used to turn the meter upside down. But meters here are have always been inside a sealed box so they can easialy spot a broken seal. Unlike uk we get 2 120 lines with 220 accross them and we dont have to pay extra monthly for higher current. We provide our main breaker the power company only fuses the transformers not our meters.
I saw once a very elegant gas meter fiddle it looked perfect and worked but if you checked the pressure after the regulator it was far too high , looking about under the floor was a second regulator the customer had drilled a hole through the diaphragm on the first regulator making the Meter work at line pressure, as it was a volumetric meter it worked fine but the gas was undercharged the second regulator corrected the fix so appliances worked fine, I was very impressed at the elegance of it
6 years on from when you posted this video))).
Last place i lived in the U.K had a coin meter , yes a coin meter in 1919 .
about a year before i moved abroad the meter was giving me grief about accepting coins , really hard to turn the knob so i gave it some wellie and it took the coin ,great thinks i but at the same time thinking crap, have i broken it . Well it turned out i had broken it but in a good way . Something had gone wrong inside it and wedged the mechanism so all i had to do was turn the knob without putting coins in , it would wind up the credits , just had to be careful about how far i wound it . Free electricity for just over a year . Dont know what happened after i left as i did not give notice of leaving , just moved with two suitcases and emailed the letting agents telling them i was not coming back ))))
As the wheel is moved by a magnetic field would placing a strong magnet by the meter affect its speed of rotation. Discuss.
What happen if we pull current as harmonic as possible? We pull huge current for very short time in a ac wave near the peak, so the current waveform isn't sinewave, but huge spike in the middle, so the motor in meter wont run. We capture the current energy in capacitor then use inverter to get sinewave AC.
This makes me think of that episode of Still Game where Winston goes around and mucks with everyone's meter so they can blast the heating without the power company catching on. XD
A person I know still has one of these old electric meters and the box he uses to wind it back looks like a modified battery charger, there is a clamp that goes to a water pipe.
another awesome video BigClive ! thankyou
Until recently I had a Ferranti meter. I had solar panels fitted. The damn thing ran backwards when I was exporting electricity! The meter was 10KWh less at the end of the day than the start. Oops!! I had to make an embarrassing phone call to British Gas. Within a week, I had a smart meter.
Hi aye Clive. See when I go into the £20 emergency on the meter it seems to run out faster. Is this true?
One of the premises stated by the electric utilities in the United States of swapping out the old reluctance disc electromechanical meters with solid-state "smart meters" was that the old meters were "inaccurate". I call it "bullfeathers". More likely, they were trying to thwart energy theft schemes such as that described in this video. If I'm not mistaken, one could have run the old-style meters backward simply by having a large capacitive load on the premises, consisting of banks of capacitors or a large synchronous motor running without a load, reversing the current and voltage phase shift from what it normally would be with inductive and resistive loads. This would be an unnatural situation, since most residences don't have enough capacitive loads to make a significant difference in electricity metering.
The new "smart meters" display absolute value of power, so _you_ pay for the current, regardless of whether it is flowing from the grid into your house or from your house into the grid - in other words, whether the loads are resistive-inductive or capacitive. That means if you're operating a solar or wind farm on your premises, a different meter needs to be installed that subtracts what is going from your house into the grid from what goes from the grid into your house. I'm not sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if smart meters are capable of recording not just the present kilowatt-hour reading, but also the forward and backward power readings, from which the net reading can be computed.
It's even simpler than that. The local power company got permission to _charge us_ for the new smart meters, even though what it really does is reduce the number of people they have to have reading meters. That's it. Some of the new ones even have wireless transmission.
It was even easier to run the old style meters backwards..just plug it in upside-down. No capacitors needed. Of course you had to remember to put it back before meter reading day. One acquaintance did this for a few years and got away with it...until he forgot to put the meter in right-side up before he went on vacation. He came home to disconnected power, a fridge of spoiled food, and a very hefty bill and security deposit to get his power back on.
This reminds me of that episode of still game where they were messing with the meters to get free leccy an winston had like 20 bars of electric fires on
I immediately thought of that episode also.
Happy New Year Clive, all the best for 2016
I know someone with solar panels on the roof. His meter is analogue and when the sun shines (with nothing major drawing current in the house) his meter goes backwards!
yeah, our house has 2 meters, the old mechanical one from the 70s, I think they put a strange black box with tamper proof locks on it to stop this I think, I never knew that was why, and we have the electronic meter for our pre pay power which just meters and then knocks off the power to the house with a relay when it sees an overload or the money on €0.00 (or -€5.00)
What happen when i take live from one meter and neutral from other does it works
I used to work for Eastern Electricity, some years ago now, and we were all trained to look for the signs of tampering and had a special way of reporting it using code words so that even if we were overheard reporting it, the people involved would not know about it as the code words were quite common words that did not reveal what you were saying unless you had received the training.
Some of the things people got up to were very inventive, but i would not like to reveal them here in case people try using them.
Loving the videos btw.
inventive is an understatement. From jamming needles through wires to drilling holes in cases in a totally obvious way.
Me and my father removed 3 of these type of meters & card meters installed in their place. Card meters (private ones) so the landlord can manage electricity in the block. Works out at 18.5p a unit, same as fixed price with EDF, Eon or N-power. Many of them don't appreciate it, don't pay rent & run up debts of over £200 on the meter!
It would be hard to explain why the seal on the meter was broken if it ever was put into use here in Denmark...
Interesting. :)
This video reminded me of some advertising sell-points for home energy systems, using solar cells on the roof, backyard wind-generator, stuff like that..anyway, the sell point was "when you have an efficient home energy system, it will cause the meter to run backwards and make the electric company owe YOU money!" :)
You have a fair grasp of the conspiritors mind clive 👍
Sort of like the old days when people would make free long distance calls using the so-called Blue Boxes...
+hoppes9 I may have dabbled.....
+hoppes9 Australia was no fun, out of circuit signalling, so no boxing. Of course pay phones occasionally got modified so one 20c worked for any call of any length to anywhere... 2 741s to detect the coin drop request and a pair of 555s to respond...
+bigclivedotcom ahhh I bet you did too ☺☺
SS7 killed it....
OK i will ask the question . explain the transformer ????? they dont have transformers in them . please explain
have an idea. this TC can be saturated with EMI/RF? without external transformer?
We just used a thick wire to halve the current , or in the case of the 50p meter...get free electric. Had to be careful tho, would be obvious if bill went from 40 quid to 5 ;-) Reversing the gas meter was far easier...disconnect and turn it around ....
by the way, i have experimented with the water consumption meter. it is a very clever device: if you reverse the water flow it still rotates the same direction.
A lot of student used to remove the meter from the wall if they could.
They would then drill a small hole in the meter and push something against the wheel to slow it down.
The meters were often fitted by landlords and operated from coins.
The landlords would charge up to them times the standard electricity prices to gain more cash from the students.
The students would respond by nobbling the meters. They had to pay something for the electricity so simply appeared to consume less.
Im a house with over 20 coin operated electricity meters it would be hard for the housekeeper to know who was doing what.
Here in the americas, you can legally turn back your meter by using a grid tie inverter. It literally plugs into the wall socket and feeds power back into the circuit at a slightly higher voltage, so anything on that leg would pull it from the inverter, and if nothing was there, it would feed back into the grid. However, to get the OK to do this, the setup must be checked and certified. Our chinaverters we bought for 1/10 the price of UL listed ones certainly would not pass...
Clive, China makes those devices you simply plug into your wall socket and makes the meter flow backwards if the current used is less than the current being put in. How do those work?
One BIG error:
This is AC system. What makes meter go backwards is that current coil has reverse polarity compared to tension coil.
This meter can legally work when consumer has power generation at home.
One more thing - In former Yugoslavia at least, it was very common to have 3 phase meters. But they were under lead seal, which must be broken in order to access them.
Main theft of electricity occured by tapping into cable that goes from utility to meter.
This is not mitigated, as new meters are always installed at public property.
In my place you'd have small AC adapter sized black box that would just plug into a mains outlet and supposedly spin the meter backwards be somewhat popular. I think it worked for really outdated meters only though.
+errur Those are scam boxes, often enough they don't even have a functionality of any kind. Reasonably typical is a small capacitor for which an experiment "demonstrating" their efficiency with a fluorescent lamp fitting can be set up, but the internal PFC correction of the fluorescent lamp fitting that would normally be there would be removed for the experiment.
Siana Gearz Well, I didn't personally deal with those but I know someone who had one and it sat plugged in one of those timer socket adapter things to run at night(?) and they claimed it worked. At the time the meters were pretty old so I wouldn't be surprised if it was true. It supposedly stopped functioning when everyone had to upgrade their meters to new ones supplied by the electrical company.
one has to cut the seal to do this.And why use ground when the neutral works just as fine and is a lot saver.
I never seen that sort of gismo before.....Nice....Back a few years (45) I lived in a flat, the landlord had his own meters put outside the flats and he had screwed them to the top rate so you where always feeding them, What we used to do was, drop the left hand side hook down underneath the meter which made it stop, of Corse we always reconnected it before he came to empty the money out the box.
I did some meter patrolling in Saudi Arabia and came across meters running backwards... they wired the CTs backwards. there were some VERY dodgy meters out there!
To me this look like a 'bypass' of the current sensing coil inside meter. I donot see circulating currents, instead I see two current paths🤔. I also guess that the purpose of primary going to Earth seems to induce on heavy secondary winding some voltage almost equal to meter's current coil, thereby trying to reduce electricity bill in half instead of all the way down to zero.
Wouldn't it be easier to put a wire shunting the Lin and Lout of the meter?
What was wrong with just a big shunt past the meter, the supply company's got suspicious when the usage was too low.
Modern meters also measure the neutral current and compare it against the current in the live conductors. If there's a significant mismatch, then that is flagged, and the next thing you see an unexpected visit from the utility company to check your meter.
+Steve Rodgers - It's more than a matter of meter inaccuracy. Neutral current should be exactly equal to line or "live" current. If it isn't, it may indicate a ground fault somewhere in an appliance or a mis-wired outlet that could present a lethal shock hazard.
+Milosz Ostrow
Regarding the safety issue -- That's what RCD's/GFCI's are for.
One chip which I am familiar with (Atmel 90E24) monitors the neutral current for anti-tampering ability. Whether all utilities use it is an open question, but the capability is there.
Steve Rodgers
I appreciate what you are saying, but major appliances such as electric ranges and clothes dryers are typically not protected by GFCI devices, and as I found through actual experience, one cannot rely on electricians and building inspectors for house wiring being done correctly. A neutral leak to earth ground could indicate an appliance floating at mains voltage, just waiting for a hapless resident to touch it and something connected to ground at the same time, receiving a nasty shock or even causing a heart-stopping event.
+Milosz Ostrow
In some parts of the world (not the US) the whole house is protected by a 1 or 2 master RCD's (In the UK for example). In the US you are correct, large 240V appliances are not protected by a GFCI, only individual 120V circuits, strings of 120V outlets, or Jacuzzi/SPA/Pool circuits are protected. Additionally for north American split phase service, neutral current monitoring is more complex as both legs and the neutral would need to be monitored.
+Steve Rodgers Well in my part of the world right in the middle of Europe, i happened to live in a municipally run university dorm which was built a few years prior and which had an alarming number of electric wiring faults, i called the fire brigade once myself because the fusebox in the common kitchen near my room was emitting black smoke. The garage door was live for a few years and the current was actually leaking to ground. After one fire too many, an inspection found that a master RCD had a hidden wiring fault, and more wiring faults were uncovered further on. The supervisor also made a disconcerting remark about potentially improper wiring in my own bathroom when he was making some repairs, i called him initially because the switch has fallen out, it wasn't even screwed in properly. Admittedly, electrics was not the only thing wrong with the building, it also had rapid façade and concrete degradation issues.
Who knows whether anybody was even fined for this. I mean there's paperwork that workers are not responsible for negligence, but companies can not be responsible either, especially not if they went bankrupt and reformed then as a "new" company, even if the new company coincidentally carries the same name as the old one. Whenever you see that the company is a holding type company folded into a limited, they essentially pay taxes twice (if they do at all - they could be declaring losses every year) but they can go bankrupt twice a year and keep re-establishing themselves. Crazy huh?
I have a 2.7kwh solar PV system. It makes my meter go backwards......though the electric company are coming to replace it pretty soon. Apparently it screws up their billing systems........
Problem in Switzerland in the good old days is the meter IN was behind a sealed cover.
If you was able to connect something to meter IN I think I would connect my home to this :-)
Thank you bicliv for your interesting videos and happy new year. I will enjoy your videos in 2016 too.
You can remove the seal off the liveIN there are security screws which uses a special shpae with a stick in the middle of the shape.
+Jeremy974 you need the crimps and crimpers if they're missing they'll accuse you of tampering.
Such an Eighties thing along with Miner's strikes and Iron Ladies. Nowadays I guess the lurk would be based on "boosting" a household's solar feed back into the grid, not so easy to achieve.
Happy New Year!
+James Lamb easy, just get a load of cheap chinese floodlights off eBay and point them at the solar panels 😂
Haha.
+James Lamb if your neighbour also has solar, connect his panels into yours! of course he may notice at some point, that or drill a hole into your neighbours wall and connect to his AC supply!
If you're going to shove two big wires in both live terminals, would it not be better to just use a single wire and bypass the meter? No fiddling with transformers or ground pipes...? I suppose it's the psychology - easier to sell the blinky-light powersaver box than get people to replace tungsten lamps with LEDs.... :)
Just like to remind people to say thank you to South Africa for the invention of the sensative coil Earth leakge breaker . Or more commonly known here as Earth leakage breaker . 😀 . Love from the wild coast of South Africa . Love the vidoes clive
in "AU" it was a simple mater of disconnecting the neutral (single feed) to meter as it wasn't a loop through & putting back befor next reading!!!! how times have changed. ps i didnt do it but it was common if in the know
An ex-girlfriend of mine's brother used to take a hot nail and melt a tiny hole in the perspex and then would jam the nail in the gears so it wouldn't spin. A week before the meter man was due, he would pull the nail out so the meter would be spinning and show some usage when they came by.
I heard they eventually put a little ratchet, either on the disc, or on the mechanical counter. Prob solved!
Amazed though, never heard of this particular device. When's it from?
Great info. Then of course, then there is of course bypassing them.
when wiring up flats add onto the communal light a piece of 1.5 and a bit of 2.5 on the cleaners socket and take them too the flat you want too live in, connect everything else as normal you will save a fortune
how can i make this "black
box"?
I hear in uk solar panels are back feeding into the grid making meters go backwards
There was a way in spain that was used for a long time before smart meters were put in, now every house here has a smart meter and its difficult for people to tamper, even the cannabis growers try to connect in before the meter and get caught now because the smart meter recognises the tampering on the line before the meter, i digress, on the meter where the contacts are there is a tiny little plate under the sealed door to the meter which is used as a bridge, what people used to do was remove the seal as no one cared and undo the screw 2 turns and the meter would stop, that was one way, the second way was to use another set of fuses in the house and run a live cable to that and then back to the meter and then another cable and fuse, when you clicked the fuses down in the house it made the meter run but at half its speed! Magnets never worked as the disc is aluminium. The best way is cables and a couple of trip fuses but i wont tell you exactly how it is wired up as that would not be legal. There was also another way and disconnect the meter and run a 500 watt light only to the meter and put cables direct to the house through fuses, the meter light was on a time switch to changes the readings each month, when they called to check you just said its a tourist house. The meter readers were paid peanuts and never cared whether you took the electric or not, same goes for water and gas. In Spain that is now not possible but it would be where there are no smart meters. the new meters also have a massive red light on them if you trigger them and as all meters are on the outside of the property on an outside garden wall it can be seen from the road, in apartments its in a communal cupboard which is not locked. With water they used to allow you 500 litres a day by putting a coin in the incoming pipe running up to your water butt on the roof, all you would do is remove the coin, its not cheating the company just allowing you more water as it still goes thro a meter. Whatever people might do never connect into the power before the meter as you will have no protection at all , as well as breaking whatever laws there are you will put yourself at great risk of death. Im just a sparky and have seen a plethora of things the spanish get up to to play with meters on water , gas and electricity. When I see it I just walk away from the job and make an excuse, i dont want my fingerprints over it all as everyone here including expats are fingerprinted.
Yeah, people who liked meter-fiddling always seemed to find they had even bigger bills than they would have had if they had just left the meter alone, with fines, repair costs and estimated bills slapped on them, not worth the effort... :P
Our meter's a little white box digital thing, but my uncle has a spinning disc one from a few decades ago (still has old '80s "Northern Electric" labels all over it!!), buzzes like crazy even under very little load, probably ready to pop soon...
Back in I think 2001 I was using a pre-pay electric key meter and switched my supplier to British Gas and the moment I put that key in the meter just stopped ticking over and was being charged nothing except the weekly standing charge for close to 3 years.
So I think just over £1 per week I was paying, but because it was free I put electric heaters in every room and must have saved thousands of Pounds over those few years.
And the only reason it stopped was they were putting updated meters in every house but they never found out what happened.
+Trakker haha remember when i got broadband with ntl but they never charged me, i had it on for about 3 years and even upgraded the speed online coz im cheeky like that lmao
Seen this been done many times before, but using a simpler method without the earthing. Also seen people use hoovers on gas meters.
I thought it was gonna be talking about multimeters until I realized that it was home electrical usage meters.
113k views and only 1k likes... 1% approval? Show your love for Clive and give a like... it's free and he deserves it !!!
This is just an educated guess. But the transformer is shifting the voltage out of phase causing VARHs to circulate through the meter causing it to run backwards..... (meter tech SF California)
Would a sort of variac have made this safer and more controllable?
No. It would complicate things.
I had a friend who was convinced he could add credit to a key meter by zapping with a piezo lighter.
Some coin operated equipment could have credit added like that, since the high voltage jumped from the metalwork to the coin switch wiring. But it risked damaging the electronics. The machine manufacturers soon added extra earth/ground bonding to prevent it.