On Sat, 26 May 2012 11:35:34 -0400, wrote:

On Sat, 26 May 2012 10:12:11 -0500, (Gordon
Burditt) wrote:

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

I thought one of the cases for smart meters was that they allowed
the utility to avoid having to build more generating capacity for
peak loads and replace it with "greenouts": shutting off heavy loads
in a house such as heating/air conditioning, water heaters, clothes
washers/ dryers, etc. without shutting off the whole house. It's
also one of the reasons for "smart appliances". This probably saves
the utility a lot of money. It still amounts to Unreliable Service(tm)
but they get to call it something else.

What they don't tell you is that the time they will shut off the air
conditioning is when it's 87 inside (with the thermostat set something
lower, it doesn't really matter how much lower because the A/C can't
keep up) and 108 outside (yes, this is in Texas).

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.

TXU is now advertising a plan you can switch to "nights are free".
I think it's more of a gimmick to get people to switch electric
providers than anything else. But anyone taking that plan will
want to switch optional use (like clothes washers/dryers) to whatever
hours are considered "night".


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.

I think removing the need to build generating capacity saves them more.

Smart meters have nothing to do with selectively shedding loads.
You need equipment in each of those branch circuits to do that.
They can do metering by time of day.

What the smart meter does do, is give the PC a data link into your home, which
*can* be used for load shedding.

I also doubt they allow the PoCo to shut off the power remotely. That
would require a pair of triacs inside the meter that could handle
200a. The I2R losses of those triacs would melt the meter base.

AIUI, some do it. It's not likely using triacs, though. 250W, or so, would
make the meter a tad warm. ;-)