Coin Operated electricity meters

[MIPS]

I already have a few North American locale kWh meters I attach to things (more reliable than a kill-a-watt for long-term logging) for fun but I wanted to see if I could get hold of a pre-pay meter.

I guess back in the day in some regions the electric company would supply a master meter for one building or a group of buildings and if the landlord wanted to rent out the spaces wired to the master meter separately but either the rental times were very short or they didn't trust the tenants to pay the bill they could install these in each location. You set the cost per kilowatt unit and then you just fed money into the meter to keep the lights on. Later versions used stripe cards then it was chip/RFID cards that could be topped up. They are also apparently not well loved because often the landlord would bill at a rate notably higher than what the utility company was billing the landlord.



Interestingly it seems they were/are only really popular in the UK. They seem to be increasing in popularity in southeast Asia but in countries like Australia or the United States they are not are were not really popular or their assets were controlled to the point they could not be found surplus. As such I had to order two Smiths meters from the UK for $50 each and they should arrive next month. They will work as long as you run them on 220/240v service but being wound for 50hz they will run faster than they should. Were 120/240v 60hz meters just not that common postwar?

[Phil]

I have never even heard of such a device. I'm not sure such a thing would even be legal in the US.

[MIPS]

Prewar they were, apparently. Google can scrape up no more than two different prepay meters manufactured by General Electric and dates them to between 1900 and 1910, with the last one selling in 2014 for $600. True antiques at that point. The meter style above you can still buy rebuilt and certified and they're 60 years old.

[Electronic M]

Interesting that this was ever a thing in North America. Used to be that we touted cheap electricity for cheap lighting and heat. Old Ready Kill-O-Watt is waiting to put you out of your misery and whatever other ad slogans they had.

These days I hear the CEO of my company complaining that electricity is going up 16% and start to wonder if these meters are the wave of the future...Please insert credit card to power your house and car.

[MIPS]

There's a lot of news articles on them. Mostly it seems to be that they are often forcefully installed.
Now I am also noting there's context here that might explain more why these are being forcefully installed: Deadbeats and idiots.

It wasn’t until I had sat through six hours of hold music – none of the energy companies wanted to take responsibility for our situation – that we realised the installation had been triggered by a £1,000 debt on the previous tenants’ account.

“We didn’t pay our bills for about nine months because we sort of viewed bills as imaginary,” says Achille Crawford, 22, a Goldsmiths graduate, who also had a pre-payment meter installed in 2013. “Someone came in our house and changed our meter while we were out. We had a huge bill to pay later for having it changed.”

Source on both of those gems is - https://www.theguardian.com/educatio...tricity-meters

I mean if there is anyone who can design a better way to make people pay-up for non-compliance the brits seem pretty good at designing devices for that but sometimes I do genuinely wonder if something they made was a solution looking for a problem or it genuinely was a solution to an otherwise dumb problem.. :/

[ChrisW6ATV]

Originally Posted by MIPS

if there is anyone who can design a better way to make people pay-up for non-compliance

Almost certainly, we already have that all over the USA right now: The "smart meters" that likely most power providers have installed.

Since one big function of those meters is presumably remote-controlled shutoff, it would be trivial to set up a credit-card-controlled online account system to buy power in bunches of kWh, including accounting for the cost differences of day versus night and so on.

The only "catch" would be local or state laws that prohibit turning off utilities if it will endanger the lives of the customers (think of electric-powered heat in North Dakota in the winter, for example).

[MIPS]

It's interesting actually that here in BC at least there is no prepayment of electricity. I contacted BC Hydro and inquired if historically it was a thing and they have never issued prepayment electricity meters for light commercial or residential properties.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Interesting that this was ever a thing in North America. Used to be that we touted cheap electricity for cheap lighting and heat. Old Ready Kill-O-Watt is waiting to put you out of your misery and whatever other ad slogans they had.

These days I hear the CEO of my company complaining that electricity is going up 16% and start to wonder if these meters are the wave of the future...Please insert credit card to power your house and car.

Do those charging stations for electric cars have credit card access, just like the parking meters have?
I'm guilty of living in the past!

[MIPS]

Every EV charger I've seen seems to be a mix of vendor lock-in (Tesla) or you need to have an account linked to a financial institution or credit plan before it will allow you to use it.
It would be nice to just pull up, prepay and plug-in but but the paranoid side leads me to believe they want you to sign up for an account specifically because they need to make you pay for the energy you use, plus they want your aggregate account information for marketing value.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by MIPS

Every EV charger I've seen seems to be a mix of vendor lock-in (Tesla) or you need to have an account linked to a financial institution or credit plan before it will allow you to use it.
It would be nice to just pull up, prepay and plug-in but but the paranoid side leads me to believe they want you to sign up for an account specifically because they need to make you pay for the energy you use, plus they want your aggregate account information for marketing value.

I still believe in carrying my fuel supply with me. I owned two Prius' and it's a proven design. I the city, where the speed limit is a maximum of 35MPH, it can get 55 to 60 MPG. That's economical enough for me!
Power from the grid isn't so cheap either!

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

Do those charging stations for electric cars have credit card access, just like the parking meters have?
I'm guilty of living in the past!

According to MIPs. I think you can get a home charger, find a normal outlet and steal electricity if so inclined.

I like the past better and do my best to live there too....I swear if I had a time machine I'd be solid gone, and there'd be a number of prominent politicians that never got born because I found ways of keeping their parents from meeting each other...

I have zero interest in owning an electric car....Now if Chevy (or Cadillac in their equivalent vehicle) had a plug in hybrid suburban with an LS V8 and it was out long enough to get it reasonable used I'd look for one(at 60k+ for a new base suburban and 100k for the cadillac version I rather use that money to make a down payment on a house, and will sooner buy used and fix it myself).

Supposedly a lot of the electrics you can use to power your whole house in an emergency...I wouldn't do that with a full electric as having the ability to drive out is important if things don't get fixed, but I would do that with a hybrid.

I kinda wonder if the house chargers on the full electrics would let you charge off a portable gas generator as you drive....The only way I could be sold on a full electric is if it could do that with a generator strapped to the roof for unlimited range. I got better things to do on road trips than sit at charging stations....Hell there's some routes you can't even take because there isn't charging.

[MIPS]

According to MIPS. I think you can get a home charger, find a normal outlet and steal electricity if so inclined.

Yep. Home EV chargers are a thing and strongly recommended. Most cars come with a 120v cable that is fine on a 15A circuit but they are glacially slow. The recommendation is run a 30A 230v circuit to your garage and purchase a high-capacity charger than can fully charge in about 8-12 hours.
When I have a friend visit with his car I let him use his 120v 20A charger in the outlet we have for the roof de-icers.

The caveat is you aren't paying at a pump anymore. You just have to imagine you left the oven on all night.

[vortalexfan]

This pre-pay electric meter sounds kind of like the old coin-op fans that GE made back in the early 1900s where you had to insert a nickel and the fan would run for about an hour per nickel, also the old coin-op radios and TVs that they used in motels back in the day as well.

[Telecolor 3007]

Some I think where used in U.K.
Looked on a 1931? book and they where avaible in Germany too.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by Telecolor 3007

Some I think where used in U.K.
Looked on a 1931? book and they where avaible in Germany too.

There was a Mr. Bean skit that showed a pre-pay electric meter. I think it was a light-housekeeping room. It was an episode of his just acquiring a TV.