Careful what you wish for. Equal outcomes... EVERYONE IS BANNED!
Victron Charge Controller Price Crash
- Thread starter Woggs1
- Start date
Bluedog225
Texas
- Joined
- Nov 18, 2019
- Messages
- 2,921
Peace.
green mountain boys
Solar Enthusiast
Many years ago, I opted out of the local utility installing smart meters on my account.
Why?
1. Because at the time, they offered no benefit to the consumer at all. None of the promised features or benefits actually worked at all. This was confirmed by the utility when I questioned them about the features. This was early in the rollout of smart meters.
2. Cost. There is/was no cost savings to change to a smart meter. The same monthly ($10.) charge is applied whether you have the smart meter or not.
3. I had real concerns the utility would use the smart meter to charge me more for my electricity in the future based upon peak usage. (change my rate) The utility had previously tried to change my home to a commercial account, in part due to high usage. I threatened to take them to court if they did and they backed down. No way was I going to give them the ability to observe my minute by minute electric usage with a smart meter.
All these years later, I still have my dumb meters and still pay the same $10/ month, the same as if I had a smart meter. I still believe I made the right decision for me.
There is always the Chit Chat section, which goes un-moderated.
Certainly not.
This section of the forum is for polite solar related content.
Argumentative behavior, advertising, and vulgarity gets censured.
As upnorthandpersonal has stated, the chit chat portion of the forum is unregulated.
Have fun!
jamiegreen
Solar Enthusiast
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2021
- Messages
- 182
Shh, we don't talk about the chit chat section around these parts.. it'll scare away the new members ?
Bluedog225
Texas
- Joined
- Nov 18, 2019
- Messages
- 2,921
Ok. I withdraw my comment. I should have asked why he was banned. I wasn’t paying attention.
Opt out of the Smart meter and you have to pay an extra $15 a month with Excel Energy.
sunshine_eggo
Happy Breffast!
Smart meters were installed prior to the offering of time-of-use plans. Our ToU plan saves us about $400 per year, so I'm okay with it.
I am speaking for friends only, but based solely on principle , I would gladly pay extra to keep unexpected people I didnt know from trampling around the property being snoopy to read the meter..
im sure they would just ignore all the solar panels , electrical warning signs ,and odd home made looking electrical stuff Plugged up here and there..
it’s just no good to having strangers walking around yer place.
True AMI smart meter (live datalink to the utility)?
Or electronic meter that allows automated meter reading from a remote terminal of a van that drives around to read the meter?
Not too many old analog meters that need to be manual read still out in the wild.
Q-Dog
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Well, the meters here were read manually until the smart meters went in, and that was just a couple of years ago. No electronics or networking at all before that. That's why they call them smart.
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Haaaa ….as of 7 years ago they used to pull up to my store and walk around to the side of the building to read the meter…I had two of them ….every month… had been doing it forever… now I did sell the store so I can’t say what they do now, ….I do know a few people out here that have been busted because the meter readers ratted them out for the smells emanating from their house ( pot) …
at my mountain house in 2004 my dog bit the meter reader and they threatened to cut off my power untill I built a fence.. they went automated at some point but forget when as I sold it too. .. I can’t speak for everyplace but meter readers are not that far removed from this hole in the wall place out in the sticks..
times have changed for sure , but I still don’t like strangers in my yard…
mine now is a new one and I like having it.
AMI and AMR meters are two different thingsWell, the meters here were read manually until the smart meters went in, and that was just a couple of years ago. No electronics or networking at all before that. That's why they call them smart.
https://www.badgermeter.com/blog/amr-vs-ami-whats-the-difference/#:~:text=Advanced%20Metering%20Infrastructure%20(AMI),-Advanced%20metering%20infrastructure&text=Unlike%20AMR%2C%20AMI%20doesn't,utilities%20via%20a%20fixed%20network.
Lot of people see electronic meters and assume AMI.
Q-Dog
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Sure. But we still had the old mechanical meters with the spinning dial and no electronics until the "smart" meters were installed.
green mountain boys
Solar Enthusiast
I still have the old analog meters. Just last week they came out to read the meters. They come every month. A few years ago they tried skipping a month and just came every two months. I didn't know they skipped a month until I got a funny looking bill. Can't remember if it was too high or too low. I called to ask what was up with my bill and they told me they no longer read the meter every month and they just guess at the bill in the odd months. I told them if they are going to charge me for reading my meter every month (which they did) then they were going to come every month to read my meter. They have read my meter every month since that phone call.
Some things are pretty backwards around here. Some folks here still have driver's license with no photo. A photo on a Vermont driver's license is not required! I think it is required on a newly issued license but you can renew your old license that has no photo.
How many of you guys remember party phone lines? I had 1 of those until the early 1990s when I moved and got a regular land line.
sunshine_eggo
Happy Breffast!
I never had one, but several of my friends in the small OK town had them in the 80s.
Two or three years ago, CMP put in a new meter here, that could (allegedly) be read remotely. It seems the old one was acting up, and they didn't want to send someone out here to read it every month, so remote monitoring via some wireless "mesh" system was their plan. We're on an island you can drive on to, and the local CMP folks are accustomed to driving down "camp roads", as we call them, but the dainty little 2WD vehicles that CMP issues to their people aren't always up to the task (we drive real vehicles, with real winter tires, because that's what common sense dictates here). Anyway, a couple of months ago, before winter arrived, I see a CMP vehicle pull up and the same guy that used to check our meter hops out. As usual, we had a nice chat. With a grin, he told me that it seems we're too far away from other meshed meters for our meter to be reliably read. Which, to my mind, makes us just about the right distance away from all those other people. ? I live here to get away from most of 'em!
