HeyBub wrote:
Power company came out today and replaced the old mechanical meter with the
new fancy-schmancy one.

Chatting up the meter-man, I learned:

1. The old meters are going to be junked. Not sold to Mexico or Lithuania
like the 'phone company did with their mechanical central office stuff.
We're talking, oh, one million meters in a city of 5.5 million. That's a
pretty big pile.

2. His quota is 60-100 meters swapped out per day.

3. One purpose is to allow the meter to be read from the street.

4. It is alleged I can check my meter on the 'net. We'll see.



They are coming here by 2012.

They will communicate with the power company using wireless technology
(no more meter readers).

They will report power outages and the restoration of power automatically.

The will constantly report usage so that the power company can adjust
the generation to just meet the needs and conserve resources (i.e. water
behind dams - hydro electric)

Smart appliances will communicate with the meter and if there is no
hurry start automatically when the rate drops (rates are/will be tiered
so that it will be cheaper at curtain times of the day).

They even say we will be able to control light switches remotely from
their web-page (I assume that will mean replacing switches to a wireless
type)?

Soon your appliances and switches will be reporting to the mother ship...

http://preview.tinyurl.com/232gjbv