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AEP installed these here several years back. They started sending everyone these great big monthly usage reports.

I found out that I use more electricity when I'm home, but less when I'm at work.

Brilliant. Totally fucking uselessly brilliant.

AEP installed these here several years back. They started sending everyone these great big monthly usage reports. I found out that I use more electricity when I'm home, but less when I'm at work. Brilliant. Totally fucking uselessly brilliant.

(post is archived)

[–] • 3 pts

These were never intended to benefit the consumer. They are intended to put meter readers out of work to save the utility money. A secondary benefit to the utility was to give them the ability to charge consumers more during peak demand times. Oh yeah and their definition of peak demand times would increase over the years since they aren't building new power plants.

Disclosure: I used to design and build electric power plants.

[–] • 1 pt

I used to service instrumentation for power plants, and my former employer did design services for the steam recovery portion. So yeah, it's all about reducing their cost and increasing yours.

[–] • 3 pts

We all understand what "smart" meters were for. They want your usage data.

[–] • 2 pts

Just a random thing I remembered about smart meters. A engineer who saw their development noted that they were getting readings that were always 10%-20% off from the actual value when compared to the manual readers.

He was in court trying to stop them from being allowed to go to market. He failed and I suspect a huge reason why the meters went forward was due to electric companies being able to send out new tech that made consumers pay more even if their actual electricity was less then before.

[–] • 1 pt

I've heard complaints about metered billing changing drastically when a rotating meter was removed. I didn't experience that, fortunately.

[–] • 2 pts

If it works it wouldnt need funding

[–] • 3 pts

Yes.

About the only thing they really did here was provide real-time outage feedback. AEP has been sucking royally at keeping line right-of-way clean, but they're very responsive to getting stuff back online.

[–] [deleted] • 2 pts

Missoula Electric Coop (MEC) began using demand billing in June. I have been able to lower my bill by changing my demand to periods outside of peak times.

MEC uses the app “Smart Hub.” You can see your daily and hourly usage. A lot of info is available.

MEC is probably an exception to the rule.

[–] • 2 pts

There are APIs for smart meters, as I've discovered, but they're SAAS and provided by a third party, and have no consumer access.

I don't think AEP provides anything other than what you can view on their website, and I haven't been on that in years. (Checkfree takes care of billing and has done that for at least the better part of 20 years.)

[–] • 2 pts

there are smart meters that can analyze the electricity use and determine what appliance is using what amount and any funny reading from motors going bad.

[–] • 3 pts

That's nothing more than watching line inductance fluctuations. However, there's no API I can scrape or portal I can easily access to see any information about the meter that's on my house.

[–] [deleted] • 1 pt

Access or an api is even doable. The propane company installed a wireless level monitor on the propane tank here and I can access the data via a smartphone app. I believe the monitor is using 4g cell service for connectivity.

I wonder how soon the propane company would be onsite if I threw some shielding over it.

[–] • 2 pts

It could be using 4G or even T-Mobile's M2M 2G service, (f you're in the USA. The last 2G carrier left...)

AEP doesn't provide anything like that as far as I know. I'll have to poke at them.