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Posted on 05/11/2011 7:17:18 AM PDT by GailA
Huh? The typical meter reader around here is a young guy probably making about $10/hour. Let's round it up to $15 including benefits and taxes. If he can do 30 houses per hour that's $0.50 per meter or $6/year/customer. I couldn't find a definitive price for a smart meter, but I've seen numbers from $50 to $300 (probable differences are labor and whether they are counting the full set up or just swapping out the meter section).
The big thing the electric companies want are the ability to vary billing by the hour, so you pay the most on late afternoons on weekdays.
I love my remote read gas meter. It is inside the house and I had to schedule a couple times a year for a reader to come out and read it. Now I don't have to bother with that. My electric meter is outside so it isn't a problem for me.
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PG&E recalled many of these meters for overcharging...
Yes. Like when we used to have rows of lathes on a machine shop floor, each with its own operator and assistant, each set doing one operation. Before that we had a horde of people at tables with files.
Now we have CNC machines, few people around.
Progress happens.
They replaced a couple of thousand defective meters out of about 8 million deployed so far, of which a small percentage may have been overcharging. This claim is pure hysteria.
BTW, this site/effort/whatever won’t stop Smartmeters. They are already @80% of the meters - 8 out of 10. They will get to nearly 100% by sometime next year, with only a handful of exceptions.
We have smart meters at our mountain cabin in NC. I am just wondering how (or if) they are different from the ones in CA?
The electric company does say that they do not presently do anything but read the meter without having to send meter-readers to all the remote properties many of which are behind locked farm gates.
And the real benefit of Smartmeters is to utilities - they replace human meter-readers.
That’s the ONLY benefit. However, by reducing their work force, they reduce their expenditures, or cost of doing business. They should reduce everyone’s bill by a proportionate amount of money they reduce their expenditures. *IF* that is all these meters were being used for, I’d be less apprehensive about it.
Of course, I don’t use the ‘self-check-out’ line at the grocery stores either, because I don’t get a discount on the cost of my groceries by doing the work myself.
Last week a utility team was swapping all of the meters in our complex (about 500 of them) for smart meters.
I had a chat with the guy who was doing the swapping at my building. They could pull the old meter and replace it with about a 5 second outage on the line. (Mine was even less—somehow I didn’t even need to reset all my digital clocks).
He sad that the new meters cost the utility about $75. Knowing something about what goes into these meters, I am impressed they can build them for this little, even if they are now building millions.
The new mileage tax that’s been in the news this week is another facet of this same mentality. Think of it as “smart metering” for your car.
So we got to get rid of electricity now in addition to fossil fuels?
Do these ding bats know what the definition of EMF is?
Perhaps they mean RF, so we've got to get rid of radio and TV too.
Brave New World.
Excellent point.
Zombies walking around aimlessly with cell phones in their ears, or texting, are doomed. Not a terrible loss, but you'd think that since Natural selection is --- well, natural, it must be OK.
One would think that the savings would pay for those smart meters in a very short time. So why the (probably permanent) 7% extra charge?
Utilities and government... do the have the same unions? Will there be a warehouse somewhere where meter readers will be paid to be there doing nothing like New York incompetent teachers?
My average bill has gone down somewhat. My gas meter got a new smart meter module, and it was replaced twice in the first six months. The electric one has only been replaced once, and I suspect it was due to our deliberate reduction in energy use.
It was funny. The gas meter has a "unit" indicator that is visibly rotating when gas is in use (water heater and central heating) and it was not rotating at all at first. You'd think something that simple would be checked by the installer.
The return on the investment is not much if at all better than the utilities return on capital otherwise. It is a worthwhile investment but not a windfall.
The unions are the same generally if the utility is private or is government owned, in California for instance SMUD (Sacramento) and LADWP (LA) are government entities, and their unions are the same as those that have organized in the private utilities.
I dont have the new smart gas meter yet...
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