opinions in smart meters
 

Just wondering if anyone has any opinions on electricity companies installing smart meters? In British Columbia our provincial electric company is putting them in instead if the old analog meters. There is a lot of strong opinions about them, I just don't know if they are based on misinformation or not? They could be beneficial if we have access to the real time data? Any experiences?

How do you define a smart meter and what do people not like about them?

We have a digital meter on our house, I think it allows for remote reading because I've never seen someone walk up and read the meter, but beyond that I don't think it has any fancy features.
Personally I'm all for installing remote cut off switches that allow the power company to turn off electric hot water heater, air conditioners, electric vehicle charging and any other device that you are not going to notice it cycling on and off.
I'm also all for electrical rates based off of demand.

That is pretty much what people don't like... eventually being charged more for electricity during the day and such... what di you mean allowing the company to cycle off things like water heaters? Is this something that is done? I think people mostly just don't like being pushed to conserve? They are read remotely and will inform of power outages... I also assume they could be shut off in an emergency situation such as fire? I haven't yet forme my opinion of them yet... I think most people are just following the popular opinion of hating them. Seems like a mob mentality....

I think I would notice it if the power company turned off my air conditioner on a hot day for more than an hour or two. Also how would you like it if you walked out to your electric car planning to take an important trip pushing its range limits only to find it hadn't been charging for the past few hours and only has 80% charge. Then, once they turn off your electric hot water heater, air conditioners, electric vehicle charging, what if they forget to turn them back on again. Its bad enough having to call the power company to report your whole house power outage. If this goes through, you may have to call them asking them to turn your hot water heater or A/C back on if they forget to do so and how are you to know if your A/C is still dead because of continuing power company demands or because someone or some program at the power company forgot to turn your A/C back on. It would also make troubleshooting your "dead" hot water heater more interesting. Also many A/C systems have a definite shut down sequence at the end of their cooling cycle and don't like to have their power drop out in mid cycle.

Is this actually happening or are you saying hypotheticaly? I would be pissed if my power got randomly shut off...

You can have it. I'll stick with being able to determine for myself what is and what isn't necessary to draw electrical power.

Here you can sign up for it ( powering off of certain devices) in exchange you get a reduction in your bill. I think AC, water heater and pool pump can be included. Supposedly they will only be shut off in periods of high demand.

I have a smart thermostat that I have programmed to turn the A/C on at a higher temperature (79 F) in the daytime and at a lower temperature (76 F) at night. My water heater is gas-fired. Almost all of my lights are fluorescents or CFLs. I have no pool pump.

Sorry, I don't want them, and I don't need them.

That is a prime example of why people object to these things! not because of reality but because of miss information.
At least around here, the power company offers to knock $5 to $10 per month off your bill if you allow them to put a peek use switch on your high demand devices that you would never notice being cycled off, the amount of time that they every cycle a device off tends to be 10 to 20 minutes per hour or less and only at peek use times that would otherwise lead to brownouts.

And no, I wouldn't mind at all if my electric car stopped charging for 20 minutes or if my A/C was triggered to turn off for a few minutes to prevent a brown out from happening and the switches that they install on devices like this have a light that comes on to signal that that it's activated and explain very clearly on them what is going on and how to tell if the peek use switch is being activated and unless I remember wrong, there is a manual bypass switch.

When enough people object to stuff like this, then we end up building more power plants and because enough people already object to wind power then we end up building more dirty power plants.

^^^ that's why EcoModder.com turns me off sometimes. We're all just misinformed, huh?

But those peek use switches are not part of the smart meters, but they are related, the smart meters are more of a learning tool for the power company and they can not remotely turn anything on or off with a smart meter, they can only collect better data and learn more about when and where they need to improve the infrastructure, to the power company it's kind of like going from a person getting their gas mileage readings when they fill up the tank to a person getting a ScanGauge and how much more they can learn about what is going on.

good point... I think the main thing people do not like about them is it is like being forced to have a scanguage on your car and then being billed more for gas you use at peak times. I keep going back and forth on how i feel about them. I think it could be a useful tool as long as the power company doesn't exploit its "customers"

There has been a lot of fuss over exposure to cellular radio waves from these things, they apparently send out a signal every 2 minutes reporting your real time data.
That is the part i do not want on my house, all though it already is. Last month they replaced my meter with their smart ? meter.
I myself do not like their spy stuck to my house. They know how little my usage is, everyones is,already. They should have stuck them on high usage clients like office buildings and industry.
Those smart meters are like iphones, put a new app in it and the thing becomes what ever you want, my conclusion.

My politics lean Libertarian and I'm all for freedom. That said, I'm for smart meters. People should be charged at a higher rate during peak usage and a lower rate for off-peak. A major cost of producing electricity is building the infrastructure to handle the peak usage.

This benefits the consumer by providing an avenue for saving money, and reduces the overall electric bill.

The argument against the meters due to the health effects of the radio transmitter is either a red herring, or based on ignorance. A cell phone held to the head exposes a person to much greater levels of radiation, and that too is perfectly harmless.

I like the idea of an opt-in program for reduced rates. I've got the Progressive Snapshot device plugged into my car to reduce my car insurance rates. This Big Brother device reports my driving habits to the company and I am rewarded by paying less on my insurance premium.

Last I heard the meters don't use radio waves at all to communicate with the power company but instead use the power lines them selves, same way you can get a TV signal in to your house over a wire and you can have a phone conversation over a wire, the high voltage electricity on the power lines is at 60hz put a 60hz filter on the other end and you have a wide range of signals that can be sent over live wires.

I kind of like the idea tho of being able to opt out if you think you use little enough electricity to not matter, they should send out a questioner asking people if they think they are better then everyone else and should there for not be part of improving the system.
Large electrical customers have already been studied, they are easy, they have very set patterns, if it's a big store it has lights, heat and ac that come on and run steady, if it's a factory the patterns are just as predictable, but houses, they tend to be the cause of brown outs, the power company already does it's best to plan for you waking up and making toast or coming home and flipping on a light bulb, but they are still just guessing and the better their tools the more refined they can get and the less fuel they burn running stand by generators.

smart meters can be turned off by the co .and they are not just going to turn it back on in a few min.( imagine the amp draw to fire every thing at once.) they have a peek hr charge, for now its like 7am to 6pm for peek charge. and when they get enough people working around the peek hrs the computer will tell them so and then they will change the bar WATCH

You can buy used electric meters, I'm sure you can buy a used smart meter even, I'm sure that if you take one apart you will not find a switch that can shut off the 200amps that could be flowing through the meter, but instead you will find a shunt for measuring how many watts are being used that is why the switches that can be installed to shut down single devices only shut down a single device, the time of use meters don't shut down devices, they log electrical use and the the time of day.

Seems like most of the arguments against the smart meters are all red herring stuff... the radio waves being harmful (some smart meters do use rf to transmit the data), the ability for thieves to determine if you are home or not based on the insecure data being transmitted (even though there are probably 10 easier ways to tell if you are home or not), the ability to shut your power off because they don't like you, and the 'conspiracy theory' that with smart meters the power companies will figure out ways to charge you more money (why bother with smart meters at all if that were the goal?).

Personally, I like the concept of the smart meter. Without them, the electric grid is still using essentially the same technology as it has for the past ~100 years, basically 'guessing' what the demands will be throughout the day. In order to meet that guessed demand, the power companies have to build capacity that will handle worst case *plus* another xx% (don't recall what the % value is, but I think it is somewhere around 25 - 35%). Any power company that uses renewables such as hydro, solar, wind also has to build in backup in case those aren't generating (due to low rainfall, for example).

Additionally neighborhoods are limited to the amount of power draw they can handle, so if on a typical hot day everyone in the neighborhood is running AC, pool pumps, water heaters, and then electric cars get added to the mix, the power company won't know that's a problem 'til the transformer blows and everyone's out of power until that gets fixed. Guess who gets charged for replacing the transformer...?

I would much rather having a smart meter and an associated 'home energy management system' which work together to control the amount of energy my appliances are using (based on the prices, which are based on demand) than have the power company build yet another "just in case" power plant which I *know* I will have to pay for.

With PG&E, I have to 'opt-in' to any "peak use shutoff" programs, and I do opt in. It is always cycled during the day (never at night, since there is no 'peak use' at night (duh), and never on the weekends) and only once a month at the most and only for 20 minutes at the most. I get notified ahead of time and can choose to not participate if the day isn't good for me (like if I have guests). When it does happen, I don't even notice it.

Actually, the idea of charging higher prices for fuel when driving during peak driving hours is a brilliant idea...! And lower prices during non-peak hours... Or how about if you get below 20mpg you are charged extra; if you get above 40mpg you get a discount... think that might change behavior?

Of course you don't have to opt-in to any of the programs, but then don't whine about the power companies making all this profit since you'll be the one handing them your money for no good reason...

i would love to have a smart meter. my power company advertises a bunch of different rates, but i get charged the peak rate because they dont have smart meters. the only way to get the off peak rate is to use a heat pump(?) and only if you buy it from them. then they charge a certain percentage of your bill at off peak rates.
i calledand asked them to charge me off peak rates because i installed a timer on my hot water heater and would only be heating water from 4 am until 7 am but they refused.
if i had a smart meter i would install timers on my hot water heater, my fridge (and insulate it) .

Message from the electric company: "Sure. We'll just replace all of the existing stupid meters at everyones' houses with new-fangled costly smart meters. We'll also install costly monitoring equipment, and train our employees how to use it. We'll eat all of the cost in labor and equipment, too... And we have this bridge in New York we'd like to sell you!"

The extra cost of installing the more sophisticated meter is offset by not having to send someone onto your property to locate a meter and hopefully read it accurately. It's further offset by not having to build as many power plants due to the reduced peak demands.

I just wish my house could get one of these smart meters and then integrate the readings for gas and water into it as well. No sense sending 3 different people out to my house every month when 1 meter can report it all, tier my service rates, and give a detailed hourly report of my usage that is viewable online... if only the future were here now.

EDIT: I believe people are confusing smart meters with smart grid. A smart meter merely reports live data, a smart grid may have the ability to switch off individual appliances, and this is done at the appliance level and not the meter level.

My water meter is now read by remote, it's only read 4 times a year instead of 12 times a year but the cost to have someone sent in to my house to swap out the new water meter, the cost of the water meter and the operating cost of it was going to have a pay back of less then 5 years from the savings of having someone go from house to house to read the mechanical meter, so if an electric meter is being read 3 times as often and I've seen then swap out electric meters a hand full of times, it's a big plug on the back, open up the meter box and yank the meter out of the socket, when you do this the power shuts off, this is the common way to shut off power to a house that didn't pay it's bill as well, plug your new meter in and your smart meter is installed, much quicker then going in to someones house to swap out a water meter and if my city found the pay back on electronically read water meters to be a savings at 4 readings per year I can only imagine how it would have changed at 12 readings per year.
The old meters were a big ball of clock work, not cheap to build either and you pay for them.
I'm not sure about everyone else, but after my smart meter went in I noticed my rates went down by a fraction of a cent per kwh, because as a public service provider that you don't have a choice over service rates have to reflect real cost of operations.

You can call your electric utility, and get them to install a smart meter for you.

I don't have numbers for the amount of plants being built, so I can't really address that "concern." However, I do know that there were two states where the power company was just going to mass convert all of the existing stupid meters to smart meters. Customers would see an extra $5/month or so charge on their electric bill. The attorney general of CT (one of the states) went ahead and told the electric company to back off and do a more incremental approach.

In Italy, where I lived for 3.5 years, they do have 100% smart meters. However, they also have really expensive electric rates. The smart meters there can do all sorts of wondrous things, like change the billing plan per customer, and auto-shut off from the central station. I'd just love it if, God forbid, there were a glitch in my paying the monthly bill, and the electric company decided to just shut off my power while the glitch was being worked out.

I say again - y'all can keep these smart meters. I'll stick with my stupid meter.

Power company can turn off your power even if you have a dumb meter. Since they have to come out to read the dumb meter anyway, it's not that much additional effort. Plus it could be more of a pain to get it turned back on.

Not sure how it is out there, but here PG&E has to give notice that it is going to turn off the power... so me missing a payment by 2 days or 10 days or whatever isn't enough... they have to send me a past due notice, stating that if the payment isn't received by x date then they will turn off power on y date. No difference if it is a smart meter or a dumb meter in that case. If they turn off power without doing the notice, they open themselves up for a lawsuit.

instead we will pay our CEO a 100 million dollar bonus and give all of our share holders their 15% dividends and ask the Canadian gov. for a tax break and a 0% interest loan to build new wind infrastructure so we can produce power cheaper but charge the users more. :cool:

me:mad:

govermnt:confused:

Average electric bill in the US is around $100 per month so a $5 increase to pay for a new meter is only a 5% increase and it's much cheaper then paying for a new power plant to be built.

So while you were in Italy you had them shut your power off a lot by mistake? The US is controlled so much by lawsuits that you are still going to be more likely to have your power go out because the grid is over loaded then because of a computer glitch, that is if the smart meters could turn the power off, a feature that would be a huge added cost to each meter and a feature that at least in the US is not built in to the meters, you still have to send someone out to your house and pull the plug, something that the power company is going to notice happen, my parents have solar and wind power and use the grid as back up only, when they first got a smart meter they were using more electricity then they were producing so they were hooked up to the grid using a small amount of grid power, then they disconnected and the power company noticed, so they sent someone out and swapped out the meter thinking it was a dud and a while later they noticed that their house was again not using any electricity for a few days so they sent someone out again to make sure that nothing was wrong because it's really hard to stop using electricity all together for days at a time, so while it's odd for them to be able to keep an eye on your usage and notice that something is not right, it also warns them when something has gone wrong before you even call to say that something has gone wrong.

When we are better informed we an make better choices and I don't understand the argument for being less informed!

But with a smart meter, the power company can type a few key commands from the comfort of their service center. Or, even better yet, the power company can have a daemon that monitors the account information on their server, and have the daemon programatically send a shut-off command. Great.

Ever hear of the term "it's easier to forgive than to ask permission?"

I must be doing well below the average, then. Even during the hot summer we had last year, I paid at most $80. My average is more like $40. A $5 increase there is somewhat more than 5%, I think.

In any case, how does raising the cost of the electric bill justify installing smart meters? Especially as the consumer would have to pay even more out of their own pocket in order to buy the necessary consumer equipment needed to let the consumer take advantage of the wonders of being able to monitor their own electricity usage?

I experienced, on average, about one outage every 2 weeks directly due to that damned smart meter feeding my apartment. Amazing experience, that. My neighbors would still have power, yet mine would go out, and repeated calls to their call center would be met with "sorry, but it must be your fault" even after electricians were brought in by my landlord to inspect my apartment for electrical faults.

Of course, being an American living in Italy, I did consume more power than the average Italian, I suppose. I suppose it served me right for insisting that I have an Euro-spec refrigerator to store milk and eggs and bread and things that I had cooked.

...Hold on a second, here...

Let's take that "small amount of grid power," shall we? How much power do you think the smart meter there consumes? 30 W? Seems reasonable, right?

Now, let's multiply that by around 500K homes. Suddenly, that's an extra 15 megawatts that need to be supplied by the electric company.

Of course, the traditional stupid meter may have consumed more while measuring a running refrigerator AND a running A/C unit AND an operating electric oven AND a running clothes dryer AND an operating water heater, but so what? The traditional stupid meter consumes next to nothing at low loads (like at night). These new-fangled smart meters consume a constant amount of power, even with "sleep mode" or anything else you care to mention. That's more power that has to be generated by the electric company. That's more emissions going into the air.

Let me Google that for you: Home Electricity Monitors

As you can see, they cost much less than $500, and they allow you to "be informed."

:eek: I thought Canada does everything right. That's what Michael Moore has been telling me.

If smart meters save money in the long run, then any percent increase is a crime. It's that kind of thinking; that the tax is just a little bit more, or it's just a little bit of freedom you are giving up, or just a small rate increase, that builds up over time and then we end up with enormous bureaucracy, taxes, costs, and loss of liberty.

I hate to say it, but at this point I would vote for any presidential candidate that promised to do absolutely nothing during their term. I just can't see either Dems or Repubs doing anything to increase liberty, or decrease bureaucracy and special interest projects.

You are quite right about information making for better informed people. This is the age of information. People have no chance of making intelligent decisions when they don't have good information. Now, I fully expect many people will still make terrible decisions once they have access to information, but at least it puts the responsibility back on them for that decision.

"Better to beg forgiveness than ask permission"

"I once prayed for a bicycle, but it never came. So, I stole a bicycle and prayed for forgiveness".

30W does not seem reasonable to me. Where did you get that number? I would expect somewhere closer to 1W, or not much more than a mechanical meter.

I'm guesstimating 30 W based on that fact that if Ryland's parents disconnected their smart meter because the meter was causing them to consume more energy than before, it must have been much more than a single watt.

This item cannot simply go to sleep, as it is monitoring household electrical power consumption. Even posing the existence of a timer-based wireless transmitter that only turns on once every 15 minutes or so to transmit for 10 seconds, that's still a noticeable amount of power being consumed.

Let's postulate 1 W, though. That's still a constant 1/2 a megawatt of power being consumed for 500K homes. That's 1/2 a megawatt that's going into the atmosphere. That's more than would have been consumed with a stupid meter.

No, their meter has nothing to do with how much energy they use, it had to do with running grow lights for garden starts and a heating pad to keep seedlings happy, I just checked and my new smart meter uses the same 3 watts as my old mechanical meter used all the time.

They turn off the grid power for weeks at a time because they tend to produce most of their own electricity.

When my power company switched to smart meters my rates dropped, the pay back on smart meters should be pretty quick while building a new power plant takes 25 to 50 years to pay for while smart meters should pay for them selves in less then a year and keep saving money and energy after that.

How does a mechanical meter use power all the time?

It uses the difference in magnetism that is created when current is running through the supply main. That's it. If there's no current running through the supply main (such as when a house isn't consuming anything), then the stupid meter consumes no power whatsoever. If a house is consuming electricity for lights and a fridge and a home entertainment center and a stove, the stupid meter does draw some of that power, but it is quite a bit less than 3 watts.

Reliable estimates show that smart meters may take between 4 and 10 years to recoup the cost of procuring and installing these things. They're not cheap.

This will not happen for everyone. Many customers in Texas and California have complained that their bills actually increased due to smart meter installation. No news article I have read mentioned anything about rate decreases, either. It was all about "oooh, you can now monitor near-real time data from your web browser!"

Which brings me back to my other point: If monitoring electric usage is so important, why not simply incur a one-time cost of $75 or so to buy one's own monitor, rather than pay $200 or so over 4 years? Why must people like me have to put up with having something installed we neither need nor want, in order to make others feel happy? I do just fine monitoring my own electric usage.

I like this, too...

April 2012:
FBI: Smart Meter Hacks Likely to Spread

January 2012: Hacking For Privacy: 2 days for amateur hacker to hack smart meter, fake readings

Everyone complains when their bill increases and they keep their mouth shut when it decreases, Texas and California have their own energy issues that cause rates to increase more then everyone else so conservation should be at the top of their list instead of standing in the way of figuring out how to use the resources we have better.

I didn't realize that you read your own electric meter and reported the readings back to the power company and if you are fine reporting back to them when your personal peek usage is and don't mind telling them what your monthly electrical use is, then by all means keep it up!

Also, if we start getting electric meters from Italy that can turn off the power to our houses, then maybe I'll listen to your objections that are based off of having your power cut by a smart meter, but as it is it's like objecting to installing a scan gauge in your car because you are worried that the scan gauge company will drain the fuel out of your gas tank... it's not even in the realm of what the tool can do!

I agree that security and privacy concerns need to be addressed for smart meters, just like they had to be (and still have to be) addressed for cell phones and wireless internet access and any other device that sends & receives data. Remember when the best security option for wireless routers was WEP and anyone with the right wireless card and a laptop could crack the key within minutes and (with the proper equipment) snoop on your wireless traffic from up to a mile away? They were not only be able to tell what video you are watching, but also see what web pages you are visiting and read the contents of the email you were sending and receiving (assuming you didn't encrypt it).

The example given in the NetworkWorld article was for a smart meter network that wasn't configured properly, which definitely is something to be worried about... as much as being worried about your financial web sites being secure, your email being secure, your cell and land line phones being secure, etc.

I get that some people, even those that embraced getting on the Internet despite all the known risks, will be against smart meters for whatever reason (real or imagined). But as you might guess, I support the smart meters and hope they take off... today's method of managing the electric grid is downright stupid, backwards, and wasteful. There was no reason for 3 million+ people to have no power for up to 5 days during a heat wave other than a dinosaur of an electric grid that we're stuck with today. If terrorism concerns you at all, the fact that someone could knock out power to that many people at once should really scare you. Smart meters pave the path toward 1) better energy management within each home (reducing load on the aging and overstressed grid), and 2) the ability to separate the current macrogrid into microgrids that support local neighborhoods with self-generated power (solar, fuel cell, wind, etc.) rather than relying on centralized power generation and several thousands of miles of distribution. With a microgrid system, the power can be routed to where it is needed, and if another portion of the grid is damaged by natural disaster or terror attack, the affected microgrid can be disconnected from the unaffected microgrids, preventing massive outages like those that affected the country a short while ago. Very similar in concept to the Internet... !

Anyway, I don't expect that I'll change the minds of those whose minds are already made up... but I do want to share what I know to counter some of the FUD that's out there.

BTW: t vago - I enjoy your aero kitteh collection! :thumbup:

Here smart meter uses GPRS data to send information to power company, then I can look hourly power consumption from customer pages that they have set up, there is chance to look data in graph or spreadsheet format, exporting to excel, hourly, daily, weekly consumption and from day, week to month range, then there is year month by month graph and also comparision to previous year, very nice service, even mothly fees are bit high, but there is nothing that can be done to those, so at least I get fancy graphs with that money.

Some think that this smart metering will then lead to price vary by hour based on market price. So far such has not been however what companies have aimed, they do sell contracts that use market price, but price is average for whole month, so there is no chance to actually time your usage to time of lower price, which I think might be good point of market prized electricity.

Price will however go up in future, how much is unknown, but there is no security with electricity prices.

I can browse all my electric bills on site too, I can download them as pdf documents and can see how electricity has not got more expensive, but transfer of electricity has increased over 30% of price as everything else on that bill in few years, electricity tax has risen 94% to save the planet or something like that, yes you pay that even when using renewable energy.

There is also comparison graphs to typical similar places where I can see typical being many times more than my usage.

Well those are possibilities that system gives, there are lot of nice things, but does it increase monthly base fee and does it make eventually electricity to cost a lot more at certain hours, I guess those are threats then. Security is threat always I guess, but they work hard to have systems up to date, so I'm not concerned as much with them as I'm with our government systems, healthcare, taxes, etc. Generally those are run by monkeys and only luck has prevented major catastrophes.

Oh and some meters here use electricity data or whatever it is called in english, but it does transmit data over electric wires. One can of course buy devices to make lan for own house using electric wiring and sockets at wall, I guess it is similar technology and can be rather secure also.

Do you have laws about storing personal information in US? I would guess there would be defined security level for each kind of data and that should keep things enough secure if company fails to meet level that is required then company have to pay a lot.
I have some memory that there would be very good laws about that in US, but my memory is not too well, it can be as well memory of some movie too, things tend to mix sometimes :(

Anyway in total I would say it is a good thing and also it is thing that probably will happen anyway, but there is possibility of off grid at many places which is better in so many ways that if I would have chance for that route, then I would go for it.

Canada does some things right but a lot of things wrong. Our Nova Scotia power company was sold to the Emera Corporation in the '80s. I guess they were losing money and decided it would be best if they sold it. they sold something like 1billion dollars worth of assets for 100 million . The emera corp has been raising our rates 2 or 3 times per year since then. Emera also runs a power company in Bermuda or Bahamas andthey are in a class action suit from residents there.

this year one of the pulp and paper mills closed down. they purchase millions of dollars worth of power every year. since they will no longer be buying power guess what happened. we got a 12% rate hike. :eek:

if smart meters are installed in Nova Scotia I can tell you what will happen. if people start to save money by monitoring our power usage. Emera will increase the rates. They are a corporation and the only people thay answer to is the share holder. DID I MENTION IT IS A MONOPOLY. we can not buy power from anyone but Emera. and they do not allow private energy producers to sell into the grid