Casey Hunt

Where I live, folks are complaining about non-trivial increases in electricity billing and metered usage. This predates the tariff changes which only kicked in on the 1st of this month. Lots of people are complaining about this, so I don't think it is a few folks who have only recently started analysing their municipal statements.

A parallel complaint is that grid voltage is low. I sometimes see 210ish late at night, but often we drop down into the 190s during the day (this happened today). On restoration after a load shed it can often drop down into the 180s. Last night it was in the 170s for a short while.

Might these two things have something to do with each other? Do our municipal meters measure actual power (watts?) or do they measure current and extrapolate the power? And if the latter, then do our appliances, geysers etc start demanding more current when the voltage drops and thus (speaking figuratively) make the meter spin faster?

I am interested in this product, and there has been some discussion about it. CBI say that it can be used to automatically disconnect high load circuits. So that suggests it is some kind of relay (it has four terminals) or that it can send signals to other Astute devices.

When you run appliances across 3-phase, balance simply means the load should be shared as evenly as possible across all three phases. If too many heavy appliances sit on one phase while the others are light, that side can draw more current and trip sooner.
Geysers and air-cons are normally high-load devices, so if they are on phase 2 and 3, it’s normal to see slightly higher usage there. Ideally, electricians try to distribute things like plugs, lights and big appliances so one side isn’t overloaded. It doesn’t have to be perfect every second, but the goal is that over time the phases carry similar load.