Smart Meter rant- technology going Backwards!

[BSVLY]

Well I know there are a lot of groups fighting the smart meter installs. Big brother, health and safety-all of that.

We were notified that we were scheduled for a Smart meter install. Wife and Discussed it and decided to not opt out and fight the system. Must be progress-right? Besides, the meter/Pole is 200 feet plus from the house (Underground run to bldgs from there), so we weren't going to be bathed in RF soup while we slept. We just didn't want to join the fight I guess. Besides, to opt out meant raising a fuss, paying a $100.00, one-time Opt Out fee, then a monthly nuisance fee ($20.00 extra per month to have a reader actually come out and keep manually reading the box).

What follows is pretty dumb on their part.

1) The smart meter was installed. It was a 15 minute job-literally. Less If we hadn't chatted with contractor.

2) Two weeks later, the power company paid us a visit! It was the local meter reader. Needed access to property to go over and "read the smart meter!!" Boy I laughed..:laughing: Reader said system was not up. OK I said.

3) This next month-a different power company PU rolled up to my gate, unlatched it and came on in again. A different reader. I spoke at length with him.

Here is what I found out:

The signal from the meters is not strong enough to reach their receivers. I'm rural-but it won't work in closest town either.

They used to just drive by the property and they had a RF pinger that would read the meter. They never entered my property.

They are erecting a tower on Brock Mountain 27 miles away in the hopes that they will be able to read the smart meters eventually.

So meantime-the Dumb Meter is going to be monitored physically by the Smart Reader in his PU truck.

All of this does not smell like progress..does it???

BTW-I'm paying ~0.16 per KH

Anyone else have a smart meter issue??:confused2:

 

[joshuabardwell]

They put one on my house a while back. Haven't seen hide nor hair of them since.

 

[Western]

Here they just drive down the street and I guess get the reading from everyone's "smart" meter...

 

[ultrarunner]

They want to charge my friend a fee to keep his meter and then a fee each month for having it.

The issue is he still has his original meter... they were unable to access it because he was on vacation when they did the neighborhood.

So why or how can they justify the fee to install a plain meter when this is all he has ever had?

 

[edlegault]

We have them here in CA. Pain in the rear end. The electric utility company can turn off your power at will, whenever they want to.

 

[retiredmgn]

In Maine they threw them up because they got a sizeable chunk of money from the Feds. But that's all they did. The programming to handle it was not even in development yet. At this point a truck still has to pull in to get a reading.
Cluster F*ck. Glad I'm not doing programming for these 'smart meters'. The programming is already 'behind schedule'. Go figure...

 

[boomer1025]

The meters we have send the information back thru the electric lines, as far as I know there is no RF being transmitted

 

[chopped]

I was told that the signal went from my house to the neighbors and on down the line and finally the power company could use the information.

 

[radioman]

same here -- they replaced mine few weeks ago. I had one of those readers for trucks to drive by and read. now they have it setup the same way so they can read from a warm comfy office. whatever. the whole install swap took 15 mins too.

OTOH, I never knew about it or heard of the plan to swap it until I saw the notice on the door tht they need to swap it out oir they will possibly shutoff the water. I was like WTH?!

 

[k0ua]

We have had a Smart Meter for several years, I believer its signals are transmitted thru the electric lines themselves. No one drives by to read it or anything like that. I have not noticed any spurious signals from it and I am very sensitive about my RF environment being an Amateur Radio Operator. If I notice anything new emitting RF, I track it down and deal with it. So far so good with the "Smart Meter"

James K0UA