My engineer friend living and working in Canada (he formerly worked with JPS) has sent me a transmittal in response to what he said JPS should have done to ‘appease’ and satisfy its customers.

He wrote it in final response to a writer ‘Dean’ who also seems to be an engineer. It is as follows;

‘I have no problem with Dean’s piece in terms of the matter as it relates to the loads and the measuring method used by the meters. Technically he is correct.

‘Where we part company is his view that the JPS could only explain the expected change as a result of the new meter in a mathematical sense, and that Jamaicans would not understand.

‘If JPS was not being surreptitious in increasing their revenue and the possible complicit wilful blindness by the OUR due to the likely political fallout in replacing the induction disc meters, they could have issued something like this:

“JPS uses imported oil to generate electricity to serve its customers. So, the cost of production will vary depending on the price of oil, among other factors. This power generated results from the islandwide demands. At the household level it is usually described as 110 volts, 50 cycles and is of a particular form, technically called a ‘sinewave’ because it is never a constant value. A rough analogy of a sine-wave is what results if one were to tie a rope a couple metres long, to a fixed point holding the other end then moving the hand in a steady vertical motion. The variations observed along the rope are an approximate few cycles of a sine-wave.

“For metering purposes, the form of the waves that the meters see is important for metering accuracy and also is determined by some types of loads, to be described below.

“It takes a specific amount of oil to generate a given amount of electricity; it uses wires to deliver that electricity to the customer. Some of the power will be lost in the wires on its way from the generating plant and equipment to the customers. The power losses in the equipment result because wires and insulation are used in the construction of the transformers that are used in the transmission and distribution to the customers. So, to deliver any given amount of power to the customer it will require more than that required, to be generated to offset the losses along the way to the consumer. It therefore means that higher power demands will result in more losses in the wires and thus more oil usage.

“The current JPS rates are structured to account for the cost of these losses in providing the services of supplying power to the metering point of the household customer.

“Up to about 20 years ago, although the household customer’s loads had losses of the same nature as mentioned above for JPS equipment, they were assumed to be lossless. In technical terms it is described as the load has unity “power factor”. Power factor could vary between zero and one ( 0, .5, .6, .8, .9, 1). In plain language, it means all the energy supplied at the metering point, and read by the existing induction disc meter, which reads only useful power, is what JPS charges the household for.

“Said another way: The existing meter only records and bills the useful power that the customer uses and ignores that which may be wasted by the loads that are in the customers’ household.

“To appreciate the concept of power factor, imagine a cart with the donkey in front pulling the cart; this is equivalent to unity power factor — all the donkey’s energy derived from its food intake is used to move the cart in the desired direction, forward. Now, imagine a cart with the donkey at the side of the cart. This is a case of a low power factor and the energy — from food to the donkey — is not being fully utilised to pull the cart forward!

“Presently, the household customer’s types of loads have changed. These now include: computers; compact fluorescent bulbs, UPS units, LCD TVs, microwave and other equipment that use a complex internal power supply. These loads are called non-linear loads with a low power factor. The effect is that they present themselves as challenges to the JPS grid supply.

1. It results in increased demands which mean increased generation, more oil and more losses to deliver the power to the households.

2. These loads cause severe distortion of the sine-wave so that the meter, which is calibrated to read sine-wave forms, will read low in favour of the household.

“These affect our profitability because the oil has to be paid for! The JPS finds these challenges unsustainable.

“To deal with these challenges, we find it reasonable for the household to be billed for the actual demand they individually put on the grid to satisfy their needs for electricity, brought about by the new types of loads they possess, to be powered. Technology has provided the household with affordable equipment and devices for the enjoyment of life for who are able to acquire these items aforementioned.

“So, too, technology has recognised that the induction disc meters do not record the demands of these users of new equipment and appliances. Hence the creation of the digital meters that will cause users of electricity to pay their fair share in the world of rising electricity costs.

“The use of digital meters is widespread and they are approved by the North American and European governments for their use for household customers.

“In the Jamaican context, households may experience a higher bill because of the capability of the new meters to record all the energy JPS is called upon to supply. Customers with a variety of modern loads will obviously see a higher increase on their bill.

“The JPS will be replacing the old meters over the next few years and will also assist customers in coping with any increase by publishing ways to conserve on their demand.”

Smart meters are dangerous says, Hedley Brown

Musgrave Gold medallist Hedley Brown has consistently claimed that the new digital meters are dangerous and are ‘bandoolo’.

Said he, ‘I still possess a double beam oscilloscope capable of reading Super High Frequency. My particular training in radar has to do with the understanding of electronic pulse wave form work. I am aware of the difference between resistive loads, inductive loads and capacitive/reactive loads and their performance on AC supplies. But don’t get carried away on some types of electronic statistics.

‘For example, every refrigerator uses a compressor (driven by an electric motor) which is an inductive load that returns a back EMF to the supply line. A moment after being switched on, such equipment only uses “make-up current” from the supply because motors are essentially generators in reverse. In my opinion, the digital smart meter registers all that not readily understood operation which is an inherent loss due to the magnetic processes involved. Those wave forms, though accurate, do show the electric processes taking place but fail to tell that you are paying for an operational process that benefits the provider only. I am going to keep on insisting that the digital electric smart meter, besides aiding large corporations in legal ‘bandoolism’, is also emitting dangerous High Frequency emissions that constitute a danger to health.’

observemark@gmail.com