it also allows them to SMART PRICE you usage... like charge you more per Khour during "peak demand" times
Posted on 01/24/2013 7:57:31 PM PST by Pleistarchos
This is one brave woman, People like this put many of us to shame for our failure to act. Appropriately her last name means 'steel' in German.
"Jennifer Stahl has been a strong advocate against the smart meter program in Naperville, Ill., for the last two years. The issue came to a head Wednesday afternoon when she was arrested while refusing to let the utility workers install the controversial device....
Stahl was at a friend’s house when she received the call from her husband that the utility workers had arrived. She was home within 15 minutes and saw they were at a neighbor’s house. Her neighbors were not home, but they had signs stating they did not permit the new meter to be installed......
(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...
Same thing happened here in TX last summer...they had just installed all the smart meters and they decided to try the rolling black out thing where they shut off your power for a few minutes in the middle of the night if they start to get near capacity...it blew a bunch of transformers as well...
Ahh OK but the only difference in a present day "Smart Meter" and a normal meter is now your usage is sent via signal to a digital recording device rather than someone physically walking up to your meter and reading the display and writing it down.
So the only real difference is that you are still tracked it just takes less manpower to do it. Which is going to reduce the need for the company to raise rates to pay for people who are doing a job a a tiny black box can do more efficiently.
You're probably right.
No, you are thinking of the "Smart Grid" a Smart Meter is just a meter that is read via a signal rather than a guy physically walking on your property and reading it.
One of the options this technology opens up is if they have a minute-by-minute report of your usage.
Many utility companies charge their industrial customers different for different times of the day based on overall demand.
It may charge more for afternoon usage during the summer when A/C demand is highest.
This can benefit businesses that run factory equipment during third shift.
The electric company can now start charging different rates for different times of the day.
Then you haven’t read the crap the power company sends you.
You know, sign up w/ them and you can save as much as $100 a summer b/c you give them the authority to regulate (turn on or turn off) your a/c b/c of the electrical load.
Like hell.
My elderly parents were getting threatening phone calls from the power company during the summer for several years, telling them not to use their A/C during certain time periods. They don’t even HAVE a smart meter! It took me 4-5 calls to get them to stop upsetting my parents.
One of the problems to homeowners is that the power company will have ability to control your thermostat.
Only if you don’t pay your power bill, then they cut off your power, the smart meters allows the company to read your meter remotely instead of the meter reader having to enter the reading manually, also in case of a power outage, the company knows what area the power is out, save a lot of time and money not having to drive around looking for downed wires and such. the meter operate on the same system as cell phones and wireless routers that most of us have already, so I don’t see any problems there, I guess fear of new things and lack of knowledge is the fear factor for some people, anyway, not to worry
It’s possible that in the future, a new tariff may be introduced and will apply to you after your new Smart Meter is installed. These new tariffs could be designed to reflect the cost of supplying energy at different times of day. In this scenario, a high consumption customer who uses energy during peak times is likely to pay more for their electricity than a high consumption customer who uses energy during off-peak times.
This is off PG&E's FAQ page. Not nearly as honest but it basically says the same thing.
E-1 rate schedule is for low-usage customers or those who cannot shift their electricity use.
E-6 is an optional time-of-use rate schedule for individually metered customers who can minimize their loads during defined time periods.
In the future, SmartMeter™ technology will allow PG&E to create more options in pricing plans where energy is billed at different prices during different times of the day. With more options, you will be able to choose a rate plan that helps your household save money and benefit the environment.
SmartMeters™ are also the first step in a larger Smart Grid effort that is driving a new green technology industry in California. There is no one single idea or technology that will get us to the Smart Grid in one fell swoop. Rather, it’s a series of small steps and incremental advancements. It may seem like a lot, but in a decade, we’ll all be shocked at how far we’ve come. The actions we take now are in preparation for technologies and developments we haven’t yet fathomed. The Smart Grid will help us keep pace.
Small steps and incremental advances. Sound familiar? Yep, we'll be shocked all right.
Unless it's a main-line (i.e. between cities) such a infrastructure would be ridiculous (just in the number of [possible] points of failure) -- a better system would have automatic mechanical shutoffs installed on the lines (a) branching from the main [city-to-city] line, and (b) branching from the city-line to the house -- this one is apparently fully mechanical -- and have some sort of way to check pressure on each side of the shutoff.
My area has basic smart meters meaning they automatically log usage remotely. But they do provide an additional huge advantage to the electric company.
Let's say you come home and your power is off. You call the utility and they can tell how many persons in your neighborhood are also without power. Within a minute they know if it is one house, a road, several roads, which phase on that road, and how many customers are without power. In emergencies such as storm's it helps the dispatcher to see very fast where the largest outages are and how to dispatch repair crews instead of having them go out and do on site estimates then decide. It cuts hours off of response times and the dispatcher knows if even Billy Bob's power is not back on yet back in the sticks.
Before that? Well hey had to send a line crew up to check the substation and the power route and see what circuits were out. Now a Dispatcher at night from home if circuit trips at the substation he can in a lot of cases try to reset it via remote control switching. It does work out to both the utility and consumers advantage.
One day I came home and my power was out. I live on a dead end rural road with about 5 houses. Usually it's the tap offfuse at the main road that blows. I called the power company and said I think the tap off fuse popped again on my road. In a matter of seconds he said No, it's only your house and likely the transformer tap off fuse. He was right. He know this because he could not contact {pole} my meter.
See if Algore gets 5 smart-meters installed. (He will need that many). The utility can cut power remotely.
Or they can stand at the street at the power pole and disconnect it there by unhooking the trandsformer fuse. I want someone to answer this for me. I have a pretty good residentail and indsutrial electrical training. How can you put an automatic 200 amp remote controlled switch in a power meter? I don't think space allows for it and your really talking some money if it could be done.
They cut power off the same way they always have. Come out to the house, pull the meter out and do one of two things. Either put plastic clips on the meter blades where they do not make contact OR take the meter and leave a glass cover in it's place.
wow. a woman gets hauled away for trying to keep her old meter, which works perfectly, and i’m reading comments that actually defend “smart” meters. tracking meters that are an obvious first step necessary for the government to ration energy.
since energy == liberty, there are obviously people here who wouldn’t know tyranny if it hit them up side the head.
and i might add, people who know basically zip about the long term consequences of relatively high power electromagnetic sources on biological systems. good luck with that concentrated source of radiation. especially if you live/work in a high density region of meters like say a high rise or appartment complex.
what are these types doing on FR?
“You are correct. All these meters do is allow the utility company to read your meter without coming onto your property.”
They also can and do dunn you with warnings that you are using more energy in the last three months than you used a year ago at this time. I know it for a fact because l have received several letters from PG&E stating that fact. Because of a back operation l was at home recuperating instead of doing the normal stuff l did before.
it also allows them to SMART PRICE you usage... like charge you more per Khour during "peak demand" times
What some others have also failed to notice is that meter belongs to the power company not the owner, anything past the meter belongs to the owner.
What some others have also failed to notice is that meter belongs to the power company not the owner, anything past the meter belongs to the owner.
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