Re: overload light Re: Pole PIg question

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Original poster: "Jim Lux" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net> 

 > Original poster: David Speck <dave-at-davidspeckmd-dot-org>
 >
 > Calling the power company here has been an exercise in futility.  They
 > assume that you are a total dunce, and give a ridiculously simplified
 > answer, or more likely, they don't even know themselves.
 >
 > I've been trying to get a coherent answer for 20 years about what
algorithm
 > my demand power meter uses, so that I could design a load controller to
 > reduce our office demand charges.  I've talked to at least 5 different
 > "tech support" engineers who have each given me different explanations,
 > most of which boil down to "you don't need to know that, and wouldn't
 > understand it even if we bothered to explain it anyway"

You certainly don't want to talk to anyone labeled as "tech support", I
suspect...

Why not call the mfr of the demand meter?  They probably have a manual for
it.

I suspect though, that there's nothing special... the behavior of the meter,
which is what you're interested, is probably fully spelled out in the
regulatory tariffs that define how you get charged. At least that's the way
it is for Southern California Edison. All the tariffs are usually on-line,
and are certainly (by law) available for inspection somewhere.

Send me an email off list and I'll see what I can dig up for you.

 >
 > I've been told that the light is an overload light, but that didn't
explain
 > why it was on all the time, even at night in the winter when the lights
and
 > A/C units are off.  Electric heat is not very common in this area, where
 > electric BTUs cost 6 times the price of natural gas BTUs. The explanation
 > about the latching function seemed the most coherent I've heard so far.
 >

There's also the possibility that the indicator is broken?  In these
deregulated, maximize shareholder value days, they may not have the budget
to drive around and look for incipient failures (it would cost money, now,
in this quarter's budget, to replace the transformer, and as long as nobody
has called claiming an outage, why do it... let next quarter's manager worry
about failures)