They Installed A Smart Meter When My Back Was Turned

My utility is also publicly traded but they walk in lock-step with every enviro-wacko initiative of the State gubamint. The Public Service Commission almost always sides with them in disputes. It's hard to 'splain but they've always come off as Big Brother to moi.

Good to hear. I realize every new device get its share of knee-jerk detractors, but there seemed to be an aweful lot of them, in this case. That, plus utility companies are generally pretty slimey. I dealt with PG&E most of my life and they are evil incarnate.

nb

In my other house, that was a normal day. When we got home at night and they weren't flashing, we wondered what was wrong.

Certainly.

It would be illegal, of course. You could probably flood the area with other (legal) ISM transmitters quite legally, though. ;-)

The benefit in area where the meters are all behind locked gates is pretty big. Prior to the smart meter I had to read my own meter and put a card in the window with the reading, unless I wanted to stay home and wait for the meter reader and let them in.

In San Francisco most of the houses have the meter facing the street and it's inside the garage but readable through a small glass window. Not the case out in the suburbs.

There is an opt-out option where I live. There's a one-time cost of $75 to put a dumb meter back in, then a monthly cost of $10. Maybe your power company has a similar program that you could sign up for.

Well where I am most people have gas dryers so that's not going to help much. BTW, the gas meters also have been modified to be read remotely as well.

I guess I could run the A/C at night when it's cool outside, and run the pool pump at night when it doesn't do much good.

I'd be careful with time of use billing because some of the biggest users of electricity have to be used at the peak time to be effective. These are air-conditioners and pool pumps.

Yeah, how come no one complained about that? Doesn't that put out the same evil radio waves?

That's the idea.

What is it about night that makes the pool pump do a bad job of filtering?

Hmmm, What? read the meter and jot it down on a card? Our meters(water, NG, power) are all remotely read. Meter reader just pass by the house to read them. Next phase, a big bird in the sky will read them feeding directly into bill computer system. Alas, meter readers will become extinct.

My experience with smart meters is the utility doesn't give you cheaper electricity during off hours and night, instead they charge you more for electricity used during peak hours and daytime.

Nothing, it just tends to cool the pool (sometimes desired).

I got my First Class FCC license 35 years ago and did some broadcast work but mostly two way radio. I often tracked down and mitigated a lot of interference. A friend of mine, an engineer with the power company communications division, often tracked down interference folks claimed was from the power company equipment and he said most of what he found was that the interference was caused by defective doorbell transformers. So I must wonder what sort of smart meter terrorist schemes I could come up with? ^_^

TDD

Why can't you run the pool pump mostly at night? If you have a bunch of people using it during the day, I can see wanting to run it during the day. But if it's not high usage, why can't it go on at 6PM, 7PM, whenever the rate goes down?

AC depends if there are people home during the day or not. If you can set it back, you can avoid some of the higher billing period. But you're right, depending on your particular circumstances, the different rates could make your bill higher or lower.

Zero everyone's power bill, and be hero of the poor?

I don't want to be anyone's hero, me and my friends help poor folks one on one. ^_^

TDD

The offer _I_ got for a "smart meter" said nothing about time-of-day rate changes. It said that it would allow them to reduce the power available to me during peak periods.

Solar pool heaters.