National Grid & ConEd Smart Meters?

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swong
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National Grid & ConEd Smart Meters?

Post by swong »

Having seen the advantages of upgrading my old style gas meter to a National Grid Smart Meter I see further advantages to a electric meter upgrade. Best part is instead of having to wait at home a day each month for the gas meter reader to take my meter reading I get billed monthly versus bi-monthly for actual usage. My question is has anyone in the NYC area had their conventional electric meter upgraded to the ConEd Smart Meter? My understanding is ConEd will provide and install this meter only if you elect to partake of their "time of use" program. While I am unsuitable for this "time of use" initiative I would still like to see if I can get one of these electric smart meters installed thereby freeing myself of the same wait one day each month for the electric meter reader to take my reading. Yes, I've already asked ConEd however was politely refused since this expensive meter is ConEd's sole method of validating high electric usage is predominantly after 10pm.

If someone actually has/had a ConEd smart meter installed w/o having to enroll in "time of use" can you share how you were able to get their electric smart meter installed. If I can get this completed I will no longer have to devote a day each month to be at home for these meter readings. Water meter and gas meter already using smart meters leaving just my electric meter the last piece of this puzzle
Carlton
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Re: National Grid & ConEd Smart Meters?

Post by Carlton »

Can't you enter your meter readings online with ConEd? National Grid and LIPA only do a actual reading about once per year if the customer enters the readings regularly online.
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swong
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Re: National Grid & ConEd Smart Meters?

Post by swong »

Hi Carlton,
ConEd doesn't allow online meter reading entry instead whenever I miss the meter reader for that day they leave a unstamped postcard. I then have to manually fill out the postcard and walk it up to the mailbox. Do-able however since I am 2/3's already with smart meters I thought I would post on this forum. Occasionally I've been very surprised at some of the informative responses posted
Mudpuppy
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Re: National Grid & ConEd Smart Meters?

Post by Mudpuppy »

Knowing nothing specifically of ConEd, they might only be putting SmartMeters in for time-of-use plans to promote the use of such plans. Unless one has solar or wind generators, time-of-use plans tend to be more beneficial for the utility company than for the consumer, and allow the utility company to better pass along actual costs to the consumer. Some speculate that in the future when SmartMeters are prevalent, all plans will be time-of-use plans.

That being said, from personal experience, SmartMeters aren't always that smart. When I first had one installed by PG&E, it was quite "dumb" and would not talk to PG&E's infrastructure. So they still had to come out and manually read the meter for about a year while working through the problem. Eventually, they replaced all the meters in the neighborhood and that seemed to do the trick.
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ryuns
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Re: National Grid & ConEd Smart Meters?

Post by ryuns »

Mudpuppy wrote:Knowing nothing specifically of ConEd, they might only be putting SmartMeters in for time-of-use plans to promote the use of such plans. Unless one has solar or wind generators, time-of-use plans tend to be more beneficial for the utility company than for the consumer, and allow the utility company to better pass along actual costs to the consumer. Some speculate that in the future when SmartMeters are prevalent, all plans will be time-of-use plans.

That being said, from personal experience, SmartMeters aren't always that smart. When I first had one installed by PG&E, it was quite "dumb" and would not talk to PG&E's infrastructure. So they still had to come out and manually read the meter for about a year while working through the problem. Eventually, they replaced all the meters in the neighborhood and that seemed to do the trick.
It's almost definitely the case that they will eventually become universal. I think whether it helps you or the utility more will depend on your habits, the particular rate structure, and where the technology goes. The technology exists right now to receive real-time pricing on my phone, and to set my thermostat from my phone (not me personally, but something like the Nest could do that), and we won't be that far away from those being linked and automated. It's also quite easy to do things like delaying the use of my washer or dishwasher (both of which have simple delay options) until late at night if there was an incentive for doing so. Heck, there's no reason my fridge can't take a nap between 3 and 5 pm on the hottest days of summer.

You and a lot of PG&E customers had some bum meters for a while. It sounds like it was really common, but the meters made in 2009 and later didn't have the issue.

It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out. Our local municipal utility is currently, I believe, done with installing smart meters everywhere, and they've announced they're planning to move everyone (residential included) to time of use by 2018.
An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered. -- GK Chesterton
thewizzer
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Re: National Grid & ConEd Smart Meters?

Post by thewizzer »

Mudpuppy wrote:Knowing nothing specifically of ConEd, they might only be putting SmartMeters in for time-of-use plans to promote the use of such plans. Unless one has solar or wind generators, time-of-use plans tend to be more beneficial for the utility company than for the consumer, and allow the utility company to better pass along actual costs to the consumer. Some speculate that in the future when SmartMeters are prevalent, all plans will be time-of-use plans.

That being said, from personal experience, SmartMeters aren't always that smart. When I first had one installed by PG&E, it was quite "dumb" and would not talk to PG&E's infrastructure. So they still had to come out and manually read the meter for about a year while working through the problem. Eventually, they replaced all the meters in the neighborhood and that seemed to do the trick.
I would have to disagree with your statement that smart meters don't benefit the consumer. I've had one installed for the past six years, and I've saved money every single year. Furthermore, we've quit watching the meter for the past several years because there's no real need to do it. Electricity prices (at least in my area) have been very low for several years now. I don't spend time worrying about paying an extra cent or two per kWh during 'peak' times.
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Re: National Grid & ConEd Smart Meters?

Post by Mudpuppy »

thewizzer wrote:
Mudpuppy wrote:Knowing nothing specifically of ConEd, they might only be putting SmartMeters in for time-of-use plans to promote the use of such plans. Unless one has solar or wind generators, time-of-use plans tend to be more beneficial for the utility company than for the consumer, and allow the utility company to better pass along actual costs to the consumer. Some speculate that in the future when SmartMeters are prevalent, all plans will be time-of-use plans.

That being said, from personal experience, SmartMeters aren't always that smart. When I first had one installed by PG&E, it was quite "dumb" and would not talk to PG&E's infrastructure. So they still had to come out and manually read the meter for about a year while working through the problem. Eventually, they replaced all the meters in the neighborhood and that seemed to do the trick.
I would have to disagree with your statement that smart meters don't benefit the consumer. I've had one installed for the past six years, and I've saved money every single year. Furthermore, we've quit watching the meter for the past several years because there's no real need to do it. Electricity prices (at least in my area) have been very low for several years now. I don't spend time worrying about paying an extra cent or two per kWh during 'peak' times.
I didn't say anything about the benefit of SmartMeters. I said the time-of-use plans are less beneficial to the consumer than they are to the power company, unless one has solar or wind generators that can generate power during peak hours.
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Re: National Grid & ConEd Smart Meters?

Post by madbrain »

Mudpuppy wrote: That being said, from personal experience, SmartMeters aren't always that smart. When I first had one installed by PG&E, it was quite "dumb" and would not talk to PG&E's infrastructure. So they still had to come out and manually read the meter for about a year while working through the problem. Eventually, they replaced all the meters in the neighborhood and that seemed to do the trick.
I don't think it's a faulty meter. The SmartMeters talk to each other over Wifi. If all the homes don't have SmartMeters, or homes are spaced too far apart, they cannot communicate. PG&E then installs Wifi repeaters at the utility poles to solve this problem.
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Re: National Grid & ConEd Smart Meters?

Post by madbrain »

Mudpuppy wrote:Knowing nothing specifically of ConEd, they might only be putting SmartMeters in for time-of-use plans to promote the use of such plans..
Oh, and time-of-use plans could already be done just fine with Stupid Meters (TM). AKA "NetMeters" which record the power used in each time-of-used period.

In fact when I first put my solar system in 2010, PG&E removed the SmartMeter and put a NetMeter .

Specifically this GE model :
http://www.pge.com/includes/docs/pdfs/b ... erhelp.pdf

The reason why they had removed the SmartMeter ? Two-fold :
1) in my area, the SmartMeters were not networked yet
2) even if it had been, the PG&E billing system for SmartMeter could not handle negative power usage numbers !

It took them a couple years to fix both problems. They took away the GE NetMeter and put in a SmartMeter last October. It was networked the next month.
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Re: National Grid & ConEd Smart Meters?

Post by Mudpuppy »

madbrain wrote:
Mudpuppy wrote: That being said, from personal experience, SmartMeters aren't always that smart. When I first had one installed by PG&E, it was quite "dumb" and would not talk to PG&E's infrastructure. So they still had to come out and manually read the meter for about a year while working through the problem. Eventually, they replaced all the meters in the neighborhood and that seemed to do the trick.
I don't think it's a faulty meter. The SmartMeters talk to each other over Wifi. If all the homes don't have SmartMeters, or homes are spaced too far apart, they cannot communicate. PG&E then installs Wifi repeaters at the utility poles to solve this problem.
[Pet peeve alert]WiFi is not synonymous with wireless. WiFi refers specifically to the 802.11 family of protocols, not just to using RF communication. In other words, all WiFi devices are wireless devices, but not all wireless devices are WiFi devices. Most SmartMeters use non-802.11 protocols to communicate with the utility to avoid interference with home electronics. Many also use the older 900MHz ISM band to avoid consumer electronics that have highly saturated the 2.4GHz ISM band and are starting to saturate the 5GHz ISM band (Maine used a 2.4GHz SmartMeter and was saturated with complaints about interference with home devices). [/Pet peeve alert]

The communication issue wasn't fixed until they swapped out the meter for a different brand, which meant I had multiple brands of SmartMeters installed on my block in a period of about 4 years. Perhaps PG&E had difficulty landing on the right combination of meter brand and infrastructure until they did a little bit of trial-and-error testing. Perhaps they had unforeseen issues with the brand that ended up being quite "dumb" in our neighborhood and swapped to one that they had better success with. Good luck trying to find out exactly why PG&E kept swapping out SmartMeter brands like yesterday's fashion throwaways in CA.

The SmartMeter rollout was a bit of a boondoggle with PG&E because of issues like this. It seemed like PG&E didn't even bother to create a testbed to see how the meters worked out in the field and instead they chose random towns in CA to try different configurations out. Consumers don't like their houses being used as testbeds in a utility experiment (particularly the ones unfortunate enough to have had the SmartMeters that signaled over the power line instead of wirelessly, which caused all sorts of issues due to excessive zero crossings during data transmissions). And no doubt we consumers are bearing the costs of having to purchase so many different brands of SmartMeters in such a short time frame. It makes for grumbles all around when a rollout of new technology is handled so poorly.
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Re: National Grid & ConEd Smart Meters?

Post by Epsilon Delta »

Mudpuppy wrote:The communication issue wasn't fixed until they swapped out the meter for a different brand, which meant I had multiple brands of SmartMeters installed on my block in a period of about 4 years. Perhaps PG&E had difficulty landing on the right combination of meter brand and infrastructure until they did a little bit of trial-and-error testing. Perhaps they had unforeseen issues with the brand that ended up being quite "dumb" in our neighborhood and swapped to one that they had better success with. Good luck trying to find out exactly why PG&E kept swapping out SmartMeter brands like yesterday's fashion throwaways in CA.
Traditional meters had a service life of decades. The useful lifespan of modern devices must be quite a shock to the utility. Personally I can't see how anybody hopes to keep wireless meters working for decades without dedicated frequencies, the year to year change in the RF environment in unlicensed bands is just too large.
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ryuns
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Re: National Grid & ConEd Smart Meters?

Post by ryuns »

Epsilon Delta wrote:
Mudpuppy wrote:The communication issue wasn't fixed until they swapped out the meter for a different brand, which meant I had multiple brands of SmartMeters installed on my block in a period of about 4 years. Perhaps PG&E had difficulty landing on the right combination of meter brand and infrastructure until they did a little bit of trial-and-error testing. Perhaps they had unforeseen issues with the brand that ended up being quite "dumb" in our neighborhood and swapped to one that they had better success with. Good luck trying to find out exactly why PG&E kept swapping out SmartMeter brands like yesterday's fashion throwaways in CA.
Traditional meters had a service life of decades. The useful lifespan of modern devices must be quite a shock to the utility. Personally I can't see how anybody hopes to keep wireless meters working for decades without dedicated frequencies, the year to year change in the RF environment in unlicensed bands is just too large.
From my understanding, PG&E had a specific problem with meters manufactured during a certain time period (2008, I believe). Our municipal utility, which didn't start installing meters until a year after PG&E did, hasn't reported an major problems and I don't know of any anecdotally. I can't comment on specific radio frequencies, so I can't seen any particular reason aside from speculation about that that their operational life would be so short. Interesting data point, the reported payback period for our utility was 3 to 5 years, with grant money and not assuming significant benefit from the opportunity to adjust rate structures more easily, etc. Without grant money, the payback was reported to be 5 to 8 years.
An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered. -- GK Chesterton
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