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A comment on Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages. Parent comment

Re:Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages by teraflop on Sunday September 25, 2022 @02:51PM (#32974651)
It's called a multiple-tariff meter. Of course it's easier to implement with modern electronics, but there's no reason you can't design an electromechanical meter device that has two different mechanisms to tally up "peak" and "off-peak" usage. I just did a quick Google search and found patents dating back to the 1970s.
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Re:Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages by tom_ on Sunday September 25, 2022 @02:57PM (#32974738)
Economy 7 in the UK switches meters based on time of day: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_7
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Re:Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages by fy20 on Sunday September 25, 2022 @04:29PM (#32975800)
...which is triggered by a radio signal.
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Re:Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages by tom_ on Sunday September 25, 2022 @04:55PM (#32976131)
Indeed! More secure that way than trying to do it locally, probably, and now BST is somebody else's problem.

But since it's been around since the late 70s, clearly you can do this without needing too much advanced tech - which is what I interpreted as being the perceived problem. (Perhaps incorrectly, but it looks like I wasn't the only one...)

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Re:Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages by kennend3 on Sunday September 25, 2022 @02:57PM (#32974725)
I think you intentionally overlooked my point.

I wasn't debating if these meters exist or not, it was that they were never used in Ontario.

Continuing your logic, did Canada ever use these "multiple-tariff" meters? If they did, what was the point of the light the OP mentioned?

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Re:Europe is in danger of rolling electricity shortages by teraflop on Sunday September 25, 2022 @03:00PM (#32974784)
I certainly didn't intentionally overlook anything. I took your "doesn't make sense" to mean that you were questioning the possibility of an "old" meter accounting for different electricity rates at different times. Since it seems that's not what you meant, I apologize for misunderstanding you.
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