On Sat, 19 Jun 2010 06:43:29 -0700 (PDT), ransley
wrote:

On Jun 18, 8:05*pm, "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 can shut off your meter remotely, even just to save power for
industry during peak hours and when your AC needs it the most. If its

They'll shut off the AC all right if you have one of those things, and
turn down your heat maybe if you have that, but they're not going to
shut off the electricity at the meter to save AC for someone else.

tampered with or the power goes out they know immediatly as the meter
contacts the system about every minute, they dont need meter readers
anymore its all computer generated now.

My nephew wanted to be a meter reader when he grew up. This is going
to hit him hard.

I would rather have the old
meter.