I went on holidays once and I shut off everything I could and unpluged everything else in my house. When I went outside that stupid little disc in the electrical meter was still turning! - meaning I was paying / using for something I couldn't find.
Made me think....
1. When your filling up your car with gas, you see the dollars ticking away - So why can't my electrical meter do the same thing and be inside where I can see it -
2. It should also have a kill switch for all the power for the next time I don't feel like feeding money to the power companies.
On the other side, if I was selling me power, I wouldn't want me to have real time information on what I'm spending on power.
Anyways - How about Really Smart Meters for the customers benefit?
I agree
No opinion
I disagree
Add your comment
This is a really good idea -Energy Consumption Feedback. Just like you said, though, the energy companies would not want this and would fight to keep it from happening.
I think it's your refrigerator. Actually, some houses or apartments have a master breaker that you can pool down and shut off everything. However, you can't do that or you will shut your refrigerator too! So, how about a master breaker that will shut off everything but some assigned outlets. That would be a vacation treat.
The power company I use (SRP) has a program called M-Power. It's a pre-paid type of program, which is the inconvenient part. But I use it because they install a new meter, and inside of your house you plug in an interface that talks to the meter. This interface is where you put in the cards you go and put money on, but it also tells you all the fun information. I can see exactly how much I spent last month, this month, today, yesterday, whatever. It shows it both in dollars, and in kWh. It shows how much you are currently using in real time, so you can look at it and wonder what is costing you $.50 an hour to run. Toys toys.
And if you want to get really fancy, http://www.google.org/powermeter/