We just got ours installed on Friday.
It was announced at the time that Customers using outdated meters would be notified of the amount their bills would likely increase to after new meters were installed and old meters were tested to determine how much power they were not recording. Has anyone received this notification?
We were told that they are not Smart Meters but they're smarter than what we had. It's been reported that 70% of the total 18,200 residential meters are older than their useful life and consequently, according to the city, have been costing $600,000 in lost revenue per annum. The old meters will be replaced as needed. These new digital meters replace the old electro-mechanical meters at a cost to the city of $2.5 million. Meter readers will no longer have to get out of their trucks to "read" the meter.
As this five year replacement program was to begin in the early part of 2013, it would be interesting to see if the city is gaining on the revenue side in spite of the 4.5% electric reduction and how many years it will take to recapture the cost.
AND, We've come a long way, baby!
Does anyone go away for say 6 mo
ReplyDeleteand has a consistent electric bill
when gone seen a reduction (from the old slow meter) in their
KWH used (besides a drop from an
energy efficient appliance etc) over the last 30 years? I don't think the meters are too old to function, I believe the new ones run faster.
Do the meters have batteries? If yes, how long do the batteries last and what is the cost in Labor & Batteries to replace?
The city is lying to you again.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I question the 18,200 electric meters. Synergetic stated that there were 10,480 in their conversion report.
PG&E, the largest utility in the country, has tested their analog meters and found them to be more than 99 percent accurate. That could be anywhere from 99.1 and 99.9 percent accuracy. If we used a medium of 99.5 in a survey of 18K meters in LW, that would mean that 91 meters were off by a margin of five tenths of one percent. For a $600K per annum loss, each of those 91 meters would have had to use in excess of $7,000 of additional power each, or nearly $550/month. Stated another way, each residence would have had to use an additional 4,600 kwhr per month. This is unlikely as that is an additional 15 kW for each transformer serving this load.
What do you think Big D?
http://www.pge.com/myhome/customerservice/smartmeter/analogmeters/