Ask Your Power Company About Smart Meters

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Ask Your Power Company About Smart Meters

Submitted by: katydidows 04/28/2009 8:31 PM

Some power companies are providing homes with smart meters. I've just heard about them via NPR (here's a link to the story: NPR: Smart Meter Saves Big Bucks For PA Family)

In summary, the smart meters provide consumers with very precise analysis of their energy consumption so that each consumer can really see where they are using the most energy and make small adjustments with significant impact.

Sounds like we can all check to see if our own companies provide this product/service - seems like you can save quite a bit.

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Comments:

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Hmmm. I read the NPR article. It sounds bad to me. I would love to have that info, but then I read that detail about the electric companies being able to "come into" your house to turn things down or off. I don't like that one little bit. It may be a future developement, but we pay for our energy usage. We have the right to waste it if we want. I would rather accidentally leave a lamp on and pay for my mistake on my electric bill rather than know that someone else is making that decision for me. But it definitely gives me more reason to work on learning enough about alternative energy systems so I can get off grid.

It's really a shame that a device that could be so useful to us as consumers to help us reduce our energy use, will also be used by people outside of our homes to decide for us how to run our homes.

Posted by anonymous on June 18, 2009 12:16 PM

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I've had my "Smart Meter" for over one year now, and I've cut my electricity bill in half. This is partly due to our efforts to minimize electricity use when rates are high, and also because I've taken other steps to reduce electricity consumption, switching to cfl lights for example.

The previous poster is confused about the power company being able to turn things off or down. That functionality, known as "smart appliances", will be voluntary, not mandatory. It can be overridden if the homeowner so desires.

Posted by Solar John on August 11, 2009 12:21 PM

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