Whenever we post an article related to smart meters, we
inevitably get some angry comments from people who say they
overcharge and are health hazards.
Apparently, there's fairly widespread concern about this and
it's actually slowing down the effort among utilities to
upgrade their networks.
Smart meters are the foundation for
smart grid. Household (and business) energy use data
streams in real time to local utilities, providing the
information (and feedback) useful to planning and
controlling energy use. Utilities can identify outages
faster, give customers more choices in rates and even
restore electricity through "self-healing" features. Since
meters are read automatically, fewer trucks are needed.
Utilities have invested $15.4 billion to install them and
another $13.4 billion will be spent through 2015, according
to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. About 27 million are
installed as of September 2011 and 65 million - half of US
homes - will have one by 2015, according to the Institute
for Electric Efficiency.
In response to resistance by some customers, states like
California, Maine and Vermont, allow people to opt-out. But
they charge them for that. As you can imagine, most people
are even angrier with that solution. Several utilities are
holding off from installing them for now.
Utilities says the fees pay for sending human meter readers
each month that record usage by hand.
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