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New Digital Electricity Meters from SDG&E
By Alicia Thompson of GreenGardenEcology.com
San Diego Gas and Electricy (SDG&E) is in the inital stage of replacing their old electricity meters (which have been around for over a century) with wireless, digital devices, known as Smart Meters. After research a little about what this means for the customer and the environment, I think the facts are interesting. Smart meters will do more than just eliminate the meter maid’s position (an SDG&E spokesman says they will not lay off any meter-readers). These new meters provide customers with detailed energy data that can help them reduce energy use and costs. SDG&E officials claim they can manger energy demand easier, identify gas leaks and other problems, and reduce meter-reading errors. Smart meters are better able to detect power outages, easier to restore power in the event of an outage, and will improve customer service relations, simply because customers will have detailed information at any time, day or night. Customers will be able to monitor their gas and electricity consumption in order to avoid higher utility rates. Customers can earn a rebate for reducing their energy use on peak usage days. SDG&E’s research revealed that as long as people know how much energy they are using, they are likely to cut back by 5 to 10 percent. This program was approved by the California Public Utilities Commission in 2007. It is expected to take 2 1/2 years to replace the 1.4 million electric meters for their 3.4 million customers and cost $572 million dollars. Some of the cost for the new meters will be paid by the customers at a rate of $1 to $1.50 a month for the technology. However the amount of money the customer can save if they take the time and effort to monitor their usage could be much greater. In addition, SDG&E plans to reward customers with credit if they reduce the power consumption during peak hours, where they can save as much as $25 to $30 a month. For example, customers will get an email sent to them saying electricity demand is peaking (which means higher rates) and they could then turn off the ice maker, or turn the thermostat down, or decide not to run major appliances. What is even more interesting is that SDB&E has partnered up with the internet giant, Google, with their new program “Google PowerMeter” to allow customers to get their daily energy usage information from the World Wide Web. SDG&E has pioneered this new transitory technology and I have no doubt we will see more gas and electricity companies following suit. This is one small step towards reducing energy usage and costs, but we still need to do a lot more in our effort to reduce our dependence on non-renewable energy sources. I hope this does not deter the effort to switch to renewable energy technology. |
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