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George

On 6/19/2010 4:43 AM, wrote:
On Fri, 18 Jun 2010 20:05:45 -0500,
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.

I doubt old meters are worth enough to try to sell. They will just
scrap them for the metal.

They used to be and it was really common practice to refurb them for
reuse. Now there is a glut of "old style" meters because of the mass
"smart meter" upgrades.

You can buy a refurb meter (set to 0000) for $10-15 bucks the last
time I looked.
I have a couple, one I got for free (not set to 0000)