Smart Meters

We had a smart meter on our home in NJ. Off-Peak usage VS On-Peak usage. To me, it seems they charged the average going rate per KW during off-peak (9:00pm to 7:00am), and then charge DOUBLE that rate for On-peak (daytime) usage. The electric hot water heater was on a timer, heating up at night, only. We washed clothes only at night. We showered early every morning. As much as we tried to save 'Daytime' usage, the monthly bill was still around $300 a month (without A/C).
The power comp also took that opportunity to tack on "Delivery Charges". These charges were just as much, if not more, than the actual monthly KW cost us!
We now have a 'stupid' meter on this larger house, and I'm so happy for it. Our monthly electric bills averaged $150 per month, for the last 3 months, WITH A/C.
The 'cost per kw is drastically cheaper down here, plus we are not charged a 'delivery fee'.

Grumpy, I didn't see FCC anywhere on the plate just Focus 28 & some other #s & my power Co.s name. Just looks like a normal digital readout, I know they said they could "ping" each meter to see if there was a problem & or read the meter.

Then it's not an RF xmitter..

OH NO MA! I might be suffering from the cell phone cancer! c'mon gimme a break wtf. I hope noones ever turned on an AM/FM radio in thier home.

BI (Before Irene) maybe a month ago, there was a power outage for maybe an hour. Big thunderstorms had gone across NJ. Then a JCP&L van pulled up and the guy swapped out the meter! I was paranoid! No warning, no "You might want to turn your pc off..."

Looks like a regular meter but it might release nanobots at night that crawl in through the navel and convert Americans into liberals.

What is next? They can take my life but they can't take my soul

I got my smart meter last year. The best thing about it is that I don't have to go out and read it every month. Yes we had to read our own meter. If you forgot for more than three months they sent a meter reader out to do it for you. Cost $25 to have your meter read.

The meter on this house is ancient but it sends the data enough that they can give me hourly graphs. Even if your's is not digital they are still watching you. You can see my weekend usage goes up, you can see in the hourly graph that my wife gets up about 4 am and the 42" plasma tv is on along with the coffee maker and whatever else. 4 pm we get home and a lot of stuff gets turned on.

I'm still not a fan of this thing. WTF is with the on-peak, off-peak BS they're pulling now? I'm surprised we're not getting hit with that here yet ..... I'd better shut up now.

Growing up, you got your normal bill, & you paid it. Now we have peaks, delivery charges, taxes up the ass, green energy for 70% more, etc etc etc .....

You guys get your meters read? Seriously? JCP&L doesn't read meters. They "Guess" your usage based off of the "Guess" from the previous month. We don't have a "smart-meter" either.

Here NYSEG does an alternating read. One month the bill is an actual read followed by an estimated bill.

The first year I got my Keystoker, they didn't get inside to read my gas meter the whole winter. I just kept getting estimated bills based on the previous years usage. When they finally read the meter, I had quite a credit coming.

SMITTY wrote:WTF is with the on-peak, off-peak BS they're pulling now?

The whole reason for charging more from noon to 9 is that is when most power is used. It's like this: Obviously during the night we use the least electricity. As we wake up and put bread in the toaster the voltage starts to drop. As it does, the power company starts generating more power. Remember you can not store AC power (other than turning it into DC). So, as the day goes on, we use more power, they open a dam, they fire up a natural gas plant, they pull rods from a nuclear plant, they get the coal boilers going 100%. The last thing they do is fire up diesel generators as they cost the most to run. There comes a point where the profits slow, stop. There also comes a point where they run out of power. IF they can not generate enough we either have a brown out (low voltage) or, as often done in California, they have rolling black outs. They shut off parts of the cities for a few hours at a time. Some one came up with the idea of Time of Day metering. "Heyyy, if we charge them way too much from noon to 9, we'll make a crap load of profit and we can say it prevents rolling black outs". So, that's how it's going to be. It starts out slow, then it get's like CA is now.... seventy cents a KWH!!

Now.... they are starting to have a problem, and they're not quite sure what to to. At exactly 9PM everyone starts doing their laundry and taking showers....and... the power companies can't produce enough power!! So now what.... different counties have different times? You are noon to nine, I'll 11 to 8?

Freddy wrote:

SMITTY wrote:WTF is with the on-peak, off-peak BS they're pulling now?

The whole reason for charging more from noon to 9 is that is when most power is used. It's like this: Obviously during the night we use the least electricity. owers....and... the power companies can't produce enough power!

Off peak electric rates are low compared to normal rates and much lower than peak use rates. My long time employer was the largest single electric user in the county, 13.7 KV at 600 amps. Now it's even larger with a second similar service entrance. Much of the use was for cooling even in the winter time. They built an ice plant that used low cost electric at night to make ice, that was then used to cool the equipment and campus buildings during the work day. If I remember right it was capable of making 100 tons of ice. Ammonia was the refrigerant that circulated in huge below ground insulated concrete tanks.

coalnewbie wrote:Or a team of govt specialists run outside and blow on a windmill. ......

Yeah when I lived in CA, I remember my microwave light being dimmer ... and the general sound of it running slower than it should. Brownout, I would guess. This was in a city about 40 miles east of Frisco. I remember reading a letter that came with our PG & E bill telling us to use power later in the day - wait till later to do laundry, etc. My reasoning was if you wait until there's more voltage flowing into your house, THEY make more money! We never paid any attention to any of that. Power never went out.

So far my rate is the same no matter what time of day. It'd better stay that way!

In Maine the advocate general did go to bat for the citizen but it ended in a compromise.

You have the ability to opt out but it will cost YOU. Funny, it's the power company that is the benefactor in this "contract", let me check to see where I agreed to this extortion....oh wait a minute.... I didn't.

So basically, you can do nothing and the benevolent powers that be will install a fancy new meter on your house at no charge, gee sounds like nirvana. (they even send a fancy color pamphlet to get your mind right for the acceptance).

Option out A : get a smart meter without RF emission for $20 (iirc) but will cost you $10.5 a month to have it 'read'

Option out B : keep your existing meter for $40 AND $12 a month for meter reader visitations.

For those wondering what plan I chose ..... let's make it fun....take a guess

your odds of winning are 1 in 3 (in comparison, your odds of getting hit by NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite are 1 in 3200).