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Comment by refurb | Hacker News Reader

Adding to this, at least the station I worked at used the tank temperature to adjust for density changes. You were buying 1L at 20C, so in the middle of winter when the fuel was 10C, you'd get a slightly smaller volume since the density increased. And slightly more volume during summer.

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So uhhh, I guess I should insulate my home natural gas pipe at the outdoor above-ground portion before it hits the meter?

(The gas would be warmer coming from the ground than atmospheric temperature during the heating season)

Wait: wouldn’t I want it to be cooler when it’s measured so it’s denser and I get more moles per volume measured?

refrigerated meter?

I've also heard you could probably do something with magnets near your electric meter.

(I read this from some "get even with someone" book where it said to prominently put magnets on the target's electric meter for the utility guy to find)

Magnet is very well known trick for workers, so you’ll get fined for that. Besides, it only worked with old meters.

Yeah, theoretically that would work (cooling the gas before it hits your meter). The effect would be far larger than for gasoline. Based on the ideal gas law, dropping the temperate by 20C would reduce the volume by 7% while keeping the mass of gas the same! The change in density of gasoline is only ~2% over the same temperature range.[2]

However, you'd need to warm the gas back up before burning it as furnaces are typically tuned for a specific density of gas.

[1]https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/ideal-gas-law [2]https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/mc-mc.nsf/eng/lm00129.html

Time for me to get my meter out of the sun. And shovel snow on it in winter. But I suppose the biggest gains would be during summer where the gas dwells a bit as it draws intermittently.

It would be interesting to see how much the gas temperature varies. Pipes are usually below the frost line, so pretty much the same temperature year round.

You’re right that if your meter is in the sun and it gets warm that probably warms the gas somewhat. How much, I’d be curious to know.

And I also have no idea if gas companies adjust for it at all. I assume not since most meters are pretty basic.

I think they just adjust globally. Either by adding a factor that depends on average temperatures, or a surcharge to account for 'system loss' between their central meter and the sum of all consumer meters.

GasCo doesn't care if individual customers pay the correct amount, just that they get their costs covered in aggregate.

I feel like natural gas is so cheap that any effort is worth at most $5, for a huge house with lots of people. My total bill in the summer is only $10.

Might be worth shoveling snow on in the winter.

Natural gas measurement is temperature-compensated, at least here in central europe. You pay for the heat energy contained in the gas, not for the net volume. The compensated heat energy is calculated based on consumption profile of the consumer class (cooking only, cooking and heating, business etc) and temperature profile of the location (pretty fine grained temperature regions).

But yes, you can still trick the meter by cooling the input medium.

One thing that threw me off in Europe is that apartments will still have individually metered water and natural gas (probably paying more in monthly account fees than usage...).

Like a cold water tap, I guess the temperature of the gas can really warm up in the pipes when it isn't run enough to get 'fresh' cold water/gas from underground quickly.

At where I live, trading water is forbidden. We rent appartments and we must not have any profit on the water. Usually, the consumption is separated per person, but sometimes that is not possible (when there are stores, for instance).

For an odd reason, however, flat rate is acceptable, so you can charge tenants a fixed monthly fee and make an actual profit out of it. Sure, there's a risk you set the flat rate price wrong.

I've always thought fuel should be sold by mass, not volume (tank LPG often is).

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