The Smart Meter and Hidden Energy Saving Information
by Don Ames
I will keep returning to all this smart meter business, over and over again, as I am dedicating a part of my life and a part of Detect Energy to the smart meter invasion. The smart meter is going to be fun, I mean really fun. Anytime a stranger can come on your property, unannounced, take away an old friend and drop off a complete stranger, you know you’re in for a laugh. To make it even better, you can ask the “drop-off-stranger” to tell you how to read the new stranger and the first stranger will just shrug their shoulders and admit,”I don’t have a clue, I just install them.”
Now, I have done some research by asking a few people that I thought might know about the smart meter and it’s hidden information - an electrician that installs solar systems, the power company stranger that installs smart meters and an executive at a power company. So far, no one knows what the flashing numbers on the front of a smart meter mean. The numbers on the meter have to mean something. The meter looks like something that you might see installed in the dashboard of a jumbo jet.
Now, as in previous articles, I maintain we need to make friends with the smart meter and learn how to use it’s technology to our advantage. With our old friend, the spinning wheel meter, we could judge our consumption by how fast the wheel was spinning. We could read the numbers on the five little clock looking things on the meter and double check the meter readers numbers. We felt included and a little bit in control. With the new smart meter, we feel left out and totally out of control. As far as we know, the jumbo jet is about to crash.
But wait, there has got to be more to it. I’m sure they did not name the meter “smart” just to make us feel dumb. Come to find out, if we include a little additional technology, we can have the smart meter talk to us and it will spill it’s guts and it’s memory banks right on our home computers. Here are two ways we can get that little smart meter stranger to start working for us instead of against us.
1. Team up with google. Google is working hard to form partnerships with power companies. Check with your power company and see if they have teamed up with google yet. If they haven’t, encourage them to do so. Once your power company has installed a smart meter at your home and has formed an agreement with google, you can set up a free account with google and have your power usage graphed right on your home computer. Check out www.google.com/powermeter.
2. It maybe several years before your area of the country gets smart meters and gets google to team up with your powr company. What can you do in the mean time? You can purchase a TED Power Monitor - there is a link on the side bar for amazon. TED is an instrument that connects to your electric panel - no electrician needed – and sends a wireless signal to a dashboard that sits, just about anywhere you want, in your house. But wait, TED has already teamed up with google, so you can get the electrical usage data on your home computer right now. And the best part is, you don’t need a smart meter – you can use your old spinning wheel friend to get the job done.
Now that we have the ability to really analysis our power usage, we can start to make informed decisions concerning our use of power. Come to find out, we don’t need to know how to read the flashing numbers on the face of the smart meter. It would be funny if the numbers really don’t mean anything! If there is a Smart Meter in a jumbo jet, I hope the pilot knows how to read it – I sure don’t know anyone else that does.
It’s about saving energy at your home. Don Ames
