Home Guy wrote:
micky wrote:

One of my friends sends me an email about a local state rep who is
preseinting to the Md. Public Service Commission a "case" to allow
people to reject smart meters.

Is there any reason to reject one?

The often-stated case for smart meters (for electricity) is that they
allow for time-of-use billing.

In other words, the cost of electricity changes during the course of a
day, and smart meters allow utility companies to more equitably charge
individual home owers for the electricity they use.

But this represents a false economy when applied on such a small scale
as the individual home.

The REAL unspoken reason for smart meters is that they save manpower
costs (meter-reading costs) for electric utilities.

The main problem is this:

Over the life of the meter, the meter will save the utility company
maybe $100 in meter-reading and other costs (remote turn on/off, etc).
However, this is offset by the up-front cost of buying the meter,
installing the network, billing software, etc. This cost (say, $500
over the life of the meter) will be borne by the home owner through
additional monthly fees.

The real savings (manpower mostly) will be enjoyed by the utility
(say, $100) at the expense of the home owner - a much larger expense
(say, $500) than the utility will gain.

Ordinarily, such a bargain in the commercial / retail marketplace is
more equitable.

For example, a consumer might pay a higher annual cost for one
credit-card over another, where the benefits of the card are perceived
to be worth the extra cost.

Utility companies want smart meters because they reduce their
meter-reading costs, plus they can do more with the meters (remote
disconnect/reconnect, offer pre-paid electicity service, etc).

The time-of-use aspect of billing for residential electricity is
bogus.

Electric utilities that supply a given residential customer base
always recoup what they spend to buy electricity by charging the
customer base accordingly. There is no need to figure out, on a
house-by-house basis, who used how many kwh during 9-am to 5-pm (or
what-ever). A total kwh reading per month is sufficient. The
differences in use patterns between houses do not amount to anything
worthy of spending $500 to $1000 for a new meter and related billing
infrastructure.

Again, time-of-use electricity billing for residential customers
represents a false economy, when the cost of the metering systems and
software are taken into account.

If those costs are borne mainly or exclusively by the home owner, then
only the utility company wins - and the home owner can never
realistically change their life-style to the point where they
time-shift enough of their electricity use to recoup the extra new
costs of paying for the meter that is imposed on them by the utility.

I know maths is hard, but let's see if we can figure this out:

Let's assume a manual meter-read can read, oh, one meter every three
minutes.

At $20/hr, all things considered, it costs the power company about $1/month
to read your meter.

A "smart" meter costs about $200 and about $40 worth of labor to install it.

So, then, for all that, the power company will recoup the expense for buying
and installing the meter in 240 months, about 20 years.

Obviously the power company can't make economic sense with this scenario. I
guess that's why they're charging me a few bucks per month for this shiny
new meter.

Aside:
The power distribution company DID come out and test the pole in my backyard
recently. They dug an access hole about 18" deep around it and bored out a
1/2" plug of wood. I don't know what they did with the plug - maybe sent it
to a lab for testing - but they did nail an aluminum plate about the size of
a fifty-cent piece to the pole with the test date on it.

The power company employee did say he thought the pole in my yard was okay -
it was one of the older ones pressure treated with creosote. It should last
sixty years he opined. He further said the newer poles, those treated with
eco-friendly materials (like extract of arugula), rot out in about a week.