Hi Robert Even as California struggles to keep the lights on and the air conditioners working during a record-breaking heat wave, the state has taken a big step toward ensuring that there is enough juice to go around in the future to serve a growing population.
Regulators at the Public Utilities Commission last week voted to allow Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to install modern electricity meters for all of its customers. The meters will have many advantages over the old technology. The company will read them remotely, saving millions of dollars in labor costs. The equipment will also help the utility monitor its electricity load and more accurately forecast how much power it needs. And the meters will make it easier to pinpoint the location of outages and to fix them quickly. The best thing about the new meters, however, is not what they will do for the company but what they will do for customers. The meters are the first step in letting small businesses and residential customers take control of their electricity usage and save money by using less power during peak hours and more when demand for energy is lower. This week, utility and government officials have been begging consumers to do just that. Turn your thermostat up to 78 or 80 degrees so that you use less air conditioning. Do your laundry at night rather than during the afternoon. Run the swimming pool filter only in the morning. All of these are perfectly sensible suggestions. But there's little incentive, other than public spirit, for small customers to follow the advice. The new meters, known as "smart meters" in the electricity business, will provide that incentive. With smart meters, customers will be able to sign up for a special program that offers a discounted base rate for the summer months coupled with a premium rate during the afternoon and early evening hours. Customers who shift some of their electricity use from the afternoon to other times of the day will then benefit financially. Under the new rate plan, a customer who chooses time-of-use rates will pay 9 cents per kilowatt-hour during off-peak times, rather than the normal rate of 11 cents an hour. They will pay the same 11 cents an hour as everyone else during partial peak hours. And they will pay the premium rate of 21 cents an hour during peak periods, from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays. A second option, known as critical peak pricing, would charge 60 cents per kilowatt-hour during peak times on no more than 15 of the hottest summer days each year. During all other hours from May through October, the customer would get a 3 cent per kilowatt-hour discount off the regular price. Some skeptics have wondered why it makes sense to move away from the old system of monopoly utilities, which built all the power plants and were reimbursed for their costs plus a profit. They then charged their customers by totaling everyone's use over a month's period and charging them a flat rate reflecting the average cost of producing the electricity they all used. Smart meters help answer that question. By literally empowering millions of individual customers to more smartly manage their electricity usage, the state as a whole will also benefit. The incentives are expected to shave as many as 450 megawatts off the peak demand served by PG&E. That's the equivalent of an entire natural gas-fired power plant that the company won't have to build or run during the hottest part of the day, thus saving money and reducing pollution. Utility regulators have been slow to approve smart meters and the new rate structure, in part because they have been hamstrung by the Legislature. Lawmakers have discouraged any new rates that would require customers to take advantage of the incentives. And the next logical step toward real-time metering, where customers would pay for the actual price of electricity each hour rather than a pre-set range of charges, might never be rolled out, even though the new technology would allow it. That's too bad, because these changes benefit individuals who are willing to actively manage their use of electricity. The status quo, on the other hand, benefits electricity hogs who use a ton of power during the hottest part of the day, when it is most expensive, but pay the same rate for that juice as they do for the stuff they use in the middle of the night -- when electricity is abundant, cheap and cleaner because only the most efficient plants are running. By giving consumers even more control over the amount they pay for electricity, the state would also create an army of users able to discipline private generators who are selling their electricity into the spot market. If those generators knew that consumers might not use as much power if the sellers charged too much, they would have a reason to hold their bids in check. Alas, that scenario does not seem to be on the horizon. But simply giving people smart meters, and the option to be paid to conserve, is a pretty good start. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Robert J. Moore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2006 9:48 AM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] Talking electric meter? >I live out in the country and we have to read our own electric meter. > Is there such a gaget that can be hooked up to a electric meter that will > talk so I can read the meter myself? > My wife can easy enough read the meter so that is not a problem but I > would > like to be able to take care of that myself if I could. > > > > > > To listen to the show archives go to link > http://acbradio.org/handyman.html > or > ftp://ftp.acbradio.org/acbradio-archives/handyman/ > > The Pod Cast address for the Blind Handy Man Show is. > http://www.acbradio.org/news/xml/podcast.php?pgm=saturday > > The Pod Cast address for the Cooking In The Dark Show is. > http://www.gcast.com/u/cookingindark/main.xml > > Visit The New Blind Handy Man Files Page To Review Contributions From > Various List Members At The Following Address: > http://www.jaws-users.com/handyman/ > Visit the new archives page at the following address > http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ > For a complete list of email commands pertaining to the Blind Handy Man > list just send a blank message to: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Yahoo! Groups Links > > > > > > > > > > -- > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.11.7/432 - Release Date: 8/29/2006 > > To listen to the show archives go to link http://acbradio.org/handyman.html or ftp://ftp.acbradio.org/acbradio-archives/handyman/ The Pod Cast address for the Blind Handy Man Show is. http://www.acbradio.org/news/xml/podcast.php?pgm=saturday The Pod Cast address for the Cooking In The Dark Show is. http://www.gcast.com/u/cookingindark/main.xml Visit The New Blind Handy Man Files Page To Review Contributions From Various List Members At The Following Address: http://www.jaws-users.com/handyman/ Visit the new archives page at the following address http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ For a complete list of email commands pertaining to the Blind Handy Man list just send a blank message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Yahoo! 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