I live in Canada and we already have 'Smart Meters'. We as consumers, were not given a choice to either continue with our old meter or upgrading to the smart meter. i feel as a consumer that I should have a choice and not have something rammed down my throat.
How do I know what this technology can or cannot do ? During this recession people are having a difficult time keeping up with bills. Will the utilities be able to shut off your power by remote control and if so are they going to charge an over-inflated price to turn it back on? The utilities need to have some kind of limitations as to what this new technology can do and the consumer should have the right to know what this cna do for them.
Will consumers want smart meters?
September 22, 2009 | Length: 00:05:20
At the AlwaysOn GoingGreen Conference in Sausalito, Calif., executives discuss variable pricing inside the home and whether consumers will accept smart metering. They add that early trials suggests consumers will not make massive behavioral changes based on new meter data. The panel, moderated by Canaccord Adams Managing Director Russ Landon, includes Adrian Tuck, CEO of Tendril Networks; Cree Edwards, CEO of Emeter; Frank Ramirez, CEO of Ice Energy; and Joaquin Silva, CEO of On-Ramp Wireless.
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RE: Will consumers want smart meters?
Posted by Tony R.
30th Sep 2009
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RE: Will consumers want smart meters?
Posted by zdmo
20th Oct 2009
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RE: Will consumers want smart meters?
Posted by day1955@...
23rd Sep 2009
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He?? no!!! we don't want idiot meters
Here, these idiot meters (like idiot kkkards) are a scam to mask additional rate
increases and massive privacy violation. When the higher bill comes out and
people complain, they simply compare the transferred reading to the digital reading
displayed on the meter, and declare that it's working properly. (An honest check
would be to compare the idiot meter reading with the reading on an old-fashioned
electromagnetic motor meter on the same line.)
Besides, it's TMI to be giving the government and/or the utility company access to,
and experience shows they're already abusing the info they have.
They weren't so bad in the 1980s when you could opt-in or opt-out. And if you
opted-in, you got a significantly cheaper rate in exchange for an agreement that
they could turn your electricity off for up to 15 minutes at a time. It was a win-win
deal, since the company/government didn't have to spend as much on expensive
peak generating units. (Then again, firms which made such agreements in
California still whined when they were actually called in, as it were, so they shut off
wide regions of customers in areas that had no dearth of supply, just to even out
the pain... Of course, these days, the environmentalist whackoes have forced
most places to use the expensive gas-fired units as their primary generating
capacity.)
increases and massive privacy violation. When the higher bill comes out and
people complain, they simply compare the transferred reading to the digital reading
displayed on the meter, and declare that it's working properly. (An honest check
would be to compare the idiot meter reading with the reading on an old-fashioned
electromagnetic motor meter on the same line.)
Besides, it's TMI to be giving the government and/or the utility company access to,
and experience shows they're already abusing the info they have.
They weren't so bad in the 1980s when you could opt-in or opt-out. And if you
opted-in, you got a significantly cheaper rate in exchange for an agreement that
they could turn your electricity off for up to 15 minutes at a time. It was a win-win
deal, since the company/government didn't have to spend as much on expensive
peak generating units. (Then again, firms which made such agreements in
California still whined when they were actually called in, as it were, so they shut off
wide regions of customers in areas that had no dearth of supply, just to even out
the pain... Of course, these days, the environmentalist whackoes have forced
most places to use the expensive gas-fired units as their primary generating
capacity.)
Posted by Professor8
25th Sep 2009
+1
Vote
RE: Will consumers want smart meters?
As the energy grid becomes the master regulator of energy usage and communications networks, the savings they would make by greater fine tuning of energy use at peak times is not passed onto the consumer as savings. The potential for price gouging is great and so is electronic tampering, a bit like the Diebold voting machines.
They are also going into the Internet business with communications over the power lines and instead of seeing themselves as a lower priced alternative to network providers, they see this as an opportunity to slow Internet traffic and raise rates. They should be regulated from the beginning.
More importantly, the forced buyback into the grid for those who invest in solar and other technologies is not effective against inflation and the high cost of investment in new energy. Cost effective and efficient "on site" independent power at homes and businesses, like solar panels, do not supply the need for power at peak times such as hot days in summer and cold nights in winter. Appliances require a great deal of power and so do new communications technologies. Add to that an electric car and the demand for power is going to increase, not decrease. Households cannot plan the investment in these technologies in comparison to the power rates because they cannot predict what will happen to the rates.
The power companies are then faced with paying higher prices for polluting power sources like coal and petroleum, or investing in new infrastructures like new battery storage technology, Algae biomass co-located plants, solar and wind in order to supply power at the same rates they do now.
More likely is a standoff that will result in higher prices and less power to consumers, who will be forced to build new power plants in their towns, pay high prices for power, cut back on energy they currently use, while trying to trade off appliances for communications equipment, neither of which they can live without these days.
The hidden agenda of the power companies is the ability to access and manipulate computer technology and other devices through the electrical wiring, itself hazardous to the brain and body health of people.
They are also going into the Internet business with communications over the power lines and instead of seeing themselves as a lower priced alternative to network providers, they see this as an opportunity to slow Internet traffic and raise rates. They should be regulated from the beginning.
More importantly, the forced buyback into the grid for those who invest in solar and other technologies is not effective against inflation and the high cost of investment in new energy. Cost effective and efficient "on site" independent power at homes and businesses, like solar panels, do not supply the need for power at peak times such as hot days in summer and cold nights in winter. Appliances require a great deal of power and so do new communications technologies. Add to that an electric car and the demand for power is going to increase, not decrease. Households cannot plan the investment in these technologies in comparison to the power rates because they cannot predict what will happen to the rates.
The power companies are then faced with paying higher prices for polluting power sources like coal and petroleum, or investing in new infrastructures like new battery storage technology, Algae biomass co-located plants, solar and wind in order to supply power at the same rates they do now.
More likely is a standoff that will result in higher prices and less power to consumers, who will be forced to build new power plants in their towns, pay high prices for power, cut back on energy they currently use, while trying to trade off appliances for communications equipment, neither of which they can live without these days.
The hidden agenda of the power companies is the ability to access and manipulate computer technology and other devices through the electrical wiring, itself hazardous to the brain and body health of people.
Posted by femtobeam@...
30th Sep 2009
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RE: Will consumers want smart meters?
Look fool. Existing Practices indicate that the intelligence of the meter has nothing to do with shutting of a person's electricity.
As the Utilities say: Just Do It
As the Utilities say: Just Do It
Posted by sk.dunnage@...
30th Sep 2009
+1
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RE: Will consumers want smart meters?
Avoid anything that uses the adjective "smart" in the description. It will invariably treat you, the end user, like an idiot.
For those of us who live in states that have "baseline usage" metering for residential users, e.g., California, our efforts would be better spent in cleaning up corrupt Public Utilities Commissions and ousting crooked state politicians who aid and abet such bureaucracies.
For those of us who live in states that have "baseline usage" metering for residential users, e.g., California, our efforts would be better spent in cleaning up corrupt Public Utilities Commissions and ousting crooked state politicians who aid and abet such bureaucracies.
Posted by Tony R.
30th Sep 2009
+1
Vote
RE: Will consumers want smart meters?
Of course we want smart meters, but on our terms, not the government's or the utilities.
We're faced with a government that wants to install remote-controlled thermostats, so they can, in their best Jimmy-Carter fashion, dictate to us what is the "proper" temperature, and punish us if we dissent. (Watch for future implementation, in which red or blue households are singled out for "special" consideration, especially when Uncle takes over the utility.)
We're seeing so-called "smart meters" being forced upon us, even though they only have high-and-low cost options, and our rates will be raised to pay for them. Yay. What about those of us who don't use that much juice to begin with? Why not invest the $500 meter cost in energy efficiency instead?
Instead of everyone getting a "smart meter", why not spend the money on a down-payment on a solar PV system? Your choice: a "smart meter" or a 200 watt panel.
Households use 20% of the electric power in California. Why are we focusing so much on the home, when 80% of the power is consumed elsewhere?
I'd welcome a smart meter. But not if my bill goes up $10 a month to pay for it.
We're faced with a government that wants to install remote-controlled thermostats, so they can, in their best Jimmy-Carter fashion, dictate to us what is the "proper" temperature, and punish us if we dissent. (Watch for future implementation, in which red or blue households are singled out for "special" consideration, especially when Uncle takes over the utility.)
We're seeing so-called "smart meters" being forced upon us, even though they only have high-and-low cost options, and our rates will be raised to pay for them. Yay. What about those of us who don't use that much juice to begin with? Why not invest the $500 meter cost in energy efficiency instead?
Instead of everyone getting a "smart meter", why not spend the money on a down-payment on a solar PV system? Your choice: a "smart meter" or a 200 watt panel.
Households use 20% of the electric power in California. Why are we focusing so much on the home, when 80% of the power is consumed elsewhere?
I'd welcome a smart meter. But not if my bill goes up $10 a month to pay for it.
Posted by zdmo
20th Oct 2009
Transcript
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>> You know if an average bill is you know 100 bucks or 200 bucks a month and you're trying to build in you have to add the technology and build the feedback with utility and it how close are we to making it work from an economic perspective at the consumer level or are we there and what does it take? Cause its easy with commercial industrial you know that's all low hanging fruit. It's a lot tougher at the residential level.
>> I think it depends a little bit on how rates get structured so if as is being proposed rates start to vary throughout the day and you start to see consumption models where the cost of electricity at night is a 3rd or a 5th of what it is during the afternoon then those kind of financial incentives start to make sense but the key here is even then I don't think as I mentioned earlier you can expect huge wholesale consumer interaction with these systems. At best you're gonna get a set and forget type model where people buy new appliances or put smart plugs on things that that they create the rules for once but they won't to keep going back to it. The thermostat is showing that and there are either cake examples of how users are really not going to interact with this in the way that perhaps we all imagined.
>> I think for 20 years we work on cost benefit analysis with elect utilities and automating their point the meter. With the introduction of demand response and some of the reactions that customers have to varying prices is thrown that business, the business model from a funding category into a positive area. That's why most all the utilities are pushing forward with smart metering. The customer is not gonna react to their metering data and make massive changes. What you will see are the general electric's of the world, the electric vehicle providers, the solar providers all of those guys creating products and services that will make it really easy for the consumer to save money. Maybe not even save money maybe to spend more money but get a lot more benefit transaction, much in the same way the telecom industry did. You know we spent a lot more on telecom usage today than we did before but the benefits we have are much larger. What we need to do is open that transaction up, let a lot of smart guys get in there and make products and services that make us better consumers but I think most of the business models driving the automation of metering right now internationally are positive and the combination of reducing the amount of labor you have, shortening outages and then the demand response benefits you get from introducing a variable pricing.
>> I think one of the greatest difficulties that we have in this discussion is first of all defining what energy efficiency means. Historically we've spoken about efficiency and we've really meant it to be sight efficiency. How much can we save at the site and will we be rewarded for saving energy at the site? That narrow view was propagated because it was easy to understand, it was easy to measure and it lead to some pretty good changes in behavior but it really serves as a proxy for the things we really care about. What we really care about is system efficiency. What we really care about is how much fuel ultimately is being consumed and what kind of fuel is being consumed to provide effective work where work is done. The entity that benefits from efficiency in the system is the utility and models that focus on the site where the consumer has to somehow receive a payback based on how much of the benefit in the system is passed onto the consumer by the utility is not long lived and doesn't have real stickiness. We have to look at a paradigm where the utility itself that is the beneficiary of efficiency under writes the deployment of energy efficacy measures and provides an opt in model to consumers for those measures because they ultimately control how much of the benefit from efficiency is passed onto consumers in rates and tariffs.
>> Did you have 1 other comment?
>> 1 other comment. I think there is a big technical challenge in addition to the business models in software. I think it's good. It needs to be a standard in the home but at the conductivity level I think Adrian put his finger on it it needs to be very reliable. Utilities don't want to have truck rolls to go deal with appliance conductivity issues or thermostats and there's a lot of interference in the home. The meter is typically low and varying size houses can cause several of the appliances to not connect. So in our modeling it could be as many as 10 to 20% of the appliances aren't connected reliably. So I think there's still a communications challenge in the home and it's you know there's Wi-Fi, there's Bluetooth that you know needs to be utility grade reliability and I don't' think we're there from a com system perspective.
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