How Smart is your Meter?

By Brooke, December 25, 2009, News

Coming soon to your neighborhood (if it hasn’t already arrived) – a new electricity meter, aka the “Smart
Meter.” Not that interested? Well, you should be. These meters are the beginning of a new infrastructure to provide you with the tools to be more efficient with energy usage.

In the past, every business and household in Texas is required to have an electric meter on their property to ensure an accurate and consistent way to measure the electricity going into your home and/or business each month. The smart meter will continue to measure your electricity usage, but it will also send information back upstream to allow your local TDSP (transmission and distribution service provider – CenterPoint Energy for the Houston area and Oncor for the Dallas/Ft. Worth area), the REPs (Retail Energy Providers, like Bounce), and you, the consumer, make better decisions. I like to compare it to a gas pump. As you pump the gas, you can see the price going up in relation to how many gallons you’re pumping – immediate feedback. This is basically the same idea with the smart meter. You will be able to see your usage and resulting cost on a more real time basis instead of having only one reading at the end of the month. You’ll actually be able to see the peaks and valleys of your energy usage and be able to make changes based on the analysis which could in turn save energy and then save money. One additional perk to this new meter is that it sends instant power outage reports to your local TDSP which leads to a much quicker response time.

Recently, government funding was granted to certain TDSP’s around the country, one of those being CenterPoint Energy, to install smart meters in homes. They say that these investments could potentially reduce U.S. electricity use by 4% a year! That’s a big number when you think of the millions of households. Also, the government’s ultimate goal is to distribute 40 million smart meters over the next few years. Be sure you check with your local TDSP to see their plans for the smart meter roll out. Also check with your REP to determine what new energy management tools they have in store for you.

For more about the Smart Meter, click here.

Be Sociable, Share!