Smart Meter,Please

Thank you for all of the awnsers and Info. The Meter reader is afraid to walk past my dogs, they are in their enclosed area,when not in the house,the meter in not in the dogs area. Now that I know what to ask, I will do and will be checking out another E.CO. near by-they do offer a new water heater with hookup.My Dh has health issues, I had read about the ability to shut off/turn down the power, so with my lack of knowlage of electricty,it concerns me.Thanks again.

Possible, in theory, to cut out 240v use, by using some type of contacts in the meter itself so they could open one set on one 120v leg, and leave the other closed....BUT what that would do along with cutting out all of your 240v service is cut out 1/2 of your 120v service as well.

Examining a service panel, one would see two bus bars ( 120v each ) running down the panel center, with 120v breakers/fuses using one of the bars, and 240v circuits tapping both bars ( 120 +120 ). As I said, the only way to cut off 240v use is to kill one whole side of the panel....meaning any 120v circuits on that side would also not work. A light might work in one room, but not the next. Your toaster might work, but a coffee maker in a different receptacle on the kitchen count might not work.

I can't see it happening.

The ONLY way for them to really control any appliance you use is as Rambler said....the appliance itself has to have a special box they can send a signal to via the electric line/smart meter, and cut off THAT appliance only. So, if the control part bothers you, don't permit the control box on your water heater, I guess. You'll be quite lonely....most folks are going to take a $100 water heater over a $900 water heater, and allow the utility to load balance some, especially if they never even know it's going on. ( meaning they have hot water whenever they want it )

This fear of smart meters is completely irrational IMHO. The power company doesn't give a flying flip about "when you are home, or sleeping" or anything like that.....the volume of data alone would be so much they would have to hire a staff the size of the Pentagon if they really wanted to sort it down to the individual level.

The meter is for two purposes I see....both of which benefit the customer.

1. Remote reading, so they save the expense of a meter reader.

2. Load balance on the system. If they can tell WHEN power is being demanded, and predict that daily, they will know WHEN to ramp up cheaper forms of power ( like a coal fired plant that takes hours to ramp up ) rather that have to bring more expensive forms of generation, or buy it up the grid.

There are folks out there making wild claims about "having a radio transmitter with all that radiation RIGHT ON MY HOUSE"......a low power transmitter, with less wattage of power than the cell phone glued to their ear.....

TnAndy hit the nail with the hammer.

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Alice
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"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

TnAndy is right. It's not about big brother I guarantee. It's about their costs. A power company can make power of their own or buy it off the grid. Depending on what there expense is depends on what time of day it is. They are billed from their power provider on what is called "peak" and "demand". If they are able to curb their consumption as a whole and buy less power during peak periods then your kwh charge is more controllable.

Power companies are not installing these devices to be able to turn off or on your equipment. They are trying to get a trend on your and their usage demands so they can look at market trends to help them determine where and when to buy power. If you realize that your hot water tank or HVAC is a load hog and you still choose not to adjust your thermostat during peak hours, it's you choice. Be prepared for a larger bill when the time comes and you can't say you haven't been warned.

Believe me, as many regs as power providers have to deal with from the govt. the last thing they're doing is snooping for them. They have to deal with govt. regs as it is and don't want any more.

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Francismilker

"The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much" James 5:16

Third use for them, monitoring loss of power.
Makes it easier to see what areas and who is without power during storms.

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馬鹿は死ななきゃ治らない。(Baka wa shinanakya naoranai) Can't fix stupid.
四面楚歌 (Seiko udoku) Farm when it's sunny, read when it rains.
知らぬが仏 (Shiranu ga hotoke) Ignorance is bliss.

Not exactly. A meter that is 98% accurate could record a value anywheres between 98 to 102, when the actually usage was 100.

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This is the government the Founding Fathers warned us about.....

Personally, I'd rather have my meter read remotely than someone tromping around my backyard and peeking in my windows.

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This is the government the Founding Fathers warned us about.....

Here people were given options, keep the old meter and pay a one time fee of $40 and pay an additional $12 per month OR,
get the smart meter.
We got the smart meter and am with others about not having the meter reader show up unannounced riling up the dog and having to fetch him every month so the guy/girl didn't get bit.

I see a few of things about em.

Power company saves money not hiring meter readers.
Power company sees outages without me having to call.
Power company can charge variable rates with them, charging more for electricity in peak hours than they do in off hours.


I don't have someone coming out on the property to read the meter.
I get a web site that shows my daily use, I can predict my bill easier and see what changing my habits does to the amount of juice I use.

Nothing on the web site would show when I was home and not that I could think of.

As for a metal box or tin foil, many in rural areas communicate back through the power lines, not by radio.

Now they also have devices some power companies will come out and install in your house like a controller for an electric water heater and a thermostat for your AC/heat they can operate remotely, and cut your usage down in peak times. Good side is if everyone had them, brownouts would be virtually eliminated. I have opted out of that stuff, even though they still call me every few months. I keep telling them give me a lower rate and I'll let you monkey with my hot water and AC..

For clarification, whether it be an old electromechnical meter with a rotation disk or a solid state electronic meter with a small black dot that tracks from left to right to show how much current you're currently drawing, they all work on the same principle. The faster they spin the more electric you're using. The difference between 98 and 102% tells if your meter is running faster or slower than normal. If it's reading 98% it's running slower and you're reaping the benefit. If it's running faster it'll read above 100% and the company is.

Of all the meters I field tested upon customer requests over the years I NEVER found a meter in the field reading above 100.3% accuracy. So, that being said, you would not see any kind of huge sum reflect on your bill. It would take years and years for this inaccuracy to amount to anything. For every 1kwh you used, this would mean your meter was mis-reading .003 kwh. Put that into math which I'm not good at and it would be .003 cents per dollar of electric bill. It would take years for you to see a single extra dollar on your bill.

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Francismilker

"The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much" James 5:16

That's the big downside - electric companies have sold a service - 'unlimited' electricity since its inception. And in many places there's just ONE company (a monopoly). To now change the terms so that it's no longer 'as much as you want to use and can pay for' it's now, it's 'as much as you can pay for, and if we determine you need it'; it's a reduction in service without the price going down.

I understand the benefits - a lot of electricity is 'wasted'- lights or heat on when people aren't home and it helps to better balance the load. The problem is that they are taking control out of the individual family's hands.

Yes this is good technology. I have had one of these "smart meters" now for years. It is a good thing.
Now I don;t have to worry about clearing the snow etc.
And it sure is nice to know that if power goes out they know right away.
And as far as lowering the bill, it did a little.
NOW though my bill and many many others in my area will be going UP and Up and UP.
Our local electric co-op is CLOSING 3 Coal Fired plants down one directly serves me.
They will be BUYING power from "other sources" now.
Thank you Obama and the epa. That is all I am going to say, now on this thread about that.

Your right it IS their meter. And just so you know, i have a masters in electronic engineering, so i have a clue. The reason i did this is because a relative has epilepsy and when the power company put a meter on his house, he starters to have more seizures. The doc said the smart meter MAY be causing this increase. The smart meter was removed without his knowedge, and replaced with a standard meter and his seizures mostly stopped. Coincidence, maybe, but he is doing much better now. I don't want to take a chance with his health when he comes over, so i put a box around mine to limit the RF transmissions. No law here say's i can't! The power company still has access to "their" meter. He doesn't seem to have a problem here. He also has a problem with some fluorescents!

What are YOUR qualifications on RF?

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"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun" - President Obama June 14, 2008

I haven't seen anyone reducing service... The programs where they adjust your thermostat and hot water heater are totally voluntary, even after you have them installed.

The only bad side I have seen is variable pricing so electricity costs more from about 4-5pm to 9-10pm than it does the rest of the day.

navy trained electronics tech shore communications "c" school with 22 years work experience repairing and testing rf communications devices. from 100kw lf transmitters up through L-band satellite transmitters.

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Greg

You are, in fact 100% sure that YOUR smart electric reader transmits via RF? If so, it would be quite unique. The reason I ask is that they typically transmit data on the power line at a different frequency. Since this technology has been around for decades, can be installed and operated far more economically that having to install hundreds of thousands of RF devices, and is currently how my local company reads their meters and, in some cases, provides internet service to customers, I don't buy the RF story. As for somebody getting seizures from their smart meter, sorry, but that dog ain't gonna' hunt, either. BTW, florescent lighting is a well documents source of seizures due to the visual stimulus provided at frequencies that disturb the brain, this stimulus can also be duplicated by syncronized strobe light flashing and even animated cartoons, as was documented in a famous incident in Japan. This is also unrelated to RF.

Just curious, does he live in a Faraday cage or walk around in a Faraday cage suit?

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馬鹿は死ななきゃ治らない。(Baka wa shinanakya naoranai) Can't fix stupid.
四面楚歌 (Seiko udoku) Farm when it's sunny, read when it rains.
知らぬが仏 (Shiranu ga hotoke) Ignorance is bliss.

I got my first "smart" meter installed a couple years ago. Only thing it was smart enough to do was to take a reading once a month. No meter reader, which was just fine with me.

This week I got another "smart" meter installed. This one records how much energy I use each hour. They don't have any way to shut me off remotely. This meter lets me pay a different rate for every hour. Looking at numbers, I can easily save money in the spring, fall, and winter. Summer will be harder and I will have to see how it goes.

Kathie

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www.littlebitfarm.net

HERE you can opt out for a price in other words you can keep old reliable mechcanical meter for say 20$ a month. i say a small fee for reliable readings and saving a good americian job is acceptable

i dont dislike technology but like alot here i do not trust the company at all andd rightly so they are always trying to screw the customer. and that they can change the software remotely as they see fit and they are not certified accurate and sealed

One of the reasons for getting rid of mechanical meters is that they became more unreliable as they aged. A lot of the manufactured controversy regarding this change involved the supposed "overcharging" created by the new meters. Fact is, some folks were luck enough to have meters that slowed down dramatically after a few decades of use, and recorded far less than the actual use. As for saving American jobs, come on now, think about it. Should we of stopped updating our phone system since it caused a lot of switchboard operators to lose jobs? Should we have refused to embrace the age of personal computing because it is hard on the post office? One of the reasons the Greeks are destitute is exactly what you propose. They abused their government to create and sustain lots of needless employment, and now find that they have created a horribly inefficient, expensive and non-competitive society. It all adds up. If a global company is looking to move to a new country, cost of living is a huge deal. Forcing utilities to waste money to keep needless employees is one way of inflating those costs, and losing in the long run. This can even turn into a competition between states. Well paid professional class folks are leaving NJ and moving to expensive locations here in eastern Pa. They cut their state income taxes in half and often save over $1000/month in real estate taxes. Paying employees to trudge around like it's 1950, manually reading meters is just silly. Having paranoid tin foil hat delusions about the issue, or wasting $240/yr of your own money to avoid technology is just bizarre.