Re: energy in UK

On 4/20/25 12:12 AM, Don Y wrote:

On 4/19/2025 12:38 PM, KevinJ93 wrote:

How short is short?  OUR gas and electric are adjacent.  But, many homes
have the gas meter in an alley while the electric is on the load center.

>
I don't know - I imaging a couple of tens of meters. They use ~450MH for the gas meter link and ~920MHz for the electric meter.

 60-70 feet would likely be pushing it -- depending on what's in the
line of sight, dead spots, etc.  E.g., often, the meters are sited
for ease of access /by the utility/.  So, may be "outside" any masonary
fences that enclose the property so the meter-reader (historically,
a person) doesn't have to do anything to gain entry.

In difficult cases a bridge direct to cellular can be installed.

Seeing them, all "exposed" like that, always makes them look vulnerable.
But, I guess no one has found a worthwhile exploit to vandalize them.
 

Where the network coverage or location of the meters precludes the usual arrangement PG&E have various RF bridges that can be used.
>

So, the gas company has an agreement with the electric utility?  When I
was doing this stuff, comms was the big challenge (measuring power
and tracking it -- internally -- is easy.  But, getting a tariff with
"someone" to haul the data back to the utility was a political/business
issue not easily addressed with technology.

>
For our local utility and many others in California the same company distributes both gas and electricity.

 Ah.  That would make is easy, of course,  And, architects would take that
into account when designing homes.
 Here, for example, even two "cookie cutter" homes will often have
different connections for each of the utilities.  My neighbor and I
share a common trench for gas supply.  But, not electric (which
is located adjacent to gas meters in both our cases).
>

In general gas lines and electric lines are not allowed to share trenches for safety reasons.