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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.

No, smart METERS cannot do that.
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).

A smart METER cannot selectively shut off, or shed, loads. A smart
"center" can (load center - or service panel)

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".

As we now do with the 3 level charging - run the heavy, optional stuff
in the low charge "night" period.

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

Not if every home does the same thing. It can ammount to several large
power stations not needing to be built.
The REAL unspoken reason for smart meters is that they save manpower
costs (meter-reading costs) for electric utilities.

At the cost of significant investment in technology - so no, I have
to disagree that it is "the REAL" reason. Remote reading could be
added to a standard meter, or "customer read" with quarterly or
by-annual "agent read" to verify honesty can also be used - and have
been in several areas.
I think removing the need to build generating capacity saves them more.

Most definitely.