Today's electric meters are a valuable tool for power providers and users

Terms like “smart meter” and “smart grid” are heard a lot these days as utilities and lawmakers talk about modernizing America’s electric utilities.
But Heartland REC members have been able to enjoy the benefits of advanced meters since Heartland first started installing them more than 10 years ago.
For most members, the most obvious change that came with the new meters was that members no longer had to read their own meters. Usage data needed for billing was sent from the meters to computers in Heartland’s Girard office through the electric lines.
Heartland is continuing to maximize the possibilities of the advanced meters currently in place.
Communicating directly with the meters helps the cooperative monitor the utility’s power infrastructure and locate outages. The stored databank of each meter’s hourly usage is also a helpful tool when trying to analyze an unusual electric bill, or identify areas of potential savings.
Today’s smartmeters are also important to modern electric rates, which take a close look at usage during peak times during the day.
Recently, some people have raised concerns about smartmeters, claiming that gathering such data is an invasion of privacy. Such claims are incorrect. Monitoring consumption of Heartland REC’s power at each member’s location is a critical part of controlling costs and maintaining Heartland’s power quality.
And vague claims about radio transmitters in some smartmeters (Heartland REC’s current meters have no radio transmitter) causing health problems also have no basis in fact.
The truth is, new technology in today’s electric meters empower consumers to take control of their energy use, and cut costs in ways we couldn’t imagine 20 years ago.
Just imagine...You’ve just left your house for a road trip when you have a moment of doubt: are the lights off? To ease the panic, you turn the car around, head back home, and check each room just to make sure. Sure enough, the lights were off.
In the not-so-distant future, you may be able to do the same thing simply by calling your house from your cell phone! That’s one of the promises of the so-called “smart home.”
As envisioned, a smart home would use a wireless network to connect appliances, lighting, heating and cooling, entertainment systems, and more to a central computer, allowing them to be controlled both within the house and remotely. This setup, while not new in concept, combines home automation with energy management.
The first wave of smart home technology currently on the market focuses on ways to help consumers cut their electric bills. This includes the ability to monitor kilowatt-hour consumption through a “smart meter” that relays real-time energy use and costs to utilities and consumers alike.
During a recent demonstration in Washington, D,C., by the U.S. Department of Energy Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, clothes dryers were equipped with LED (light-emitting diode) screens that “talked” to an electric meter and let people know the most affordable times to use the appliance. Other smart appliances shown employed a simple red light/green light approach to signal when they were less expensive to operate.
Consumers and power companies can save a lot of money by using appliances late in the evening or earlier in the day during ‘off-peak’ times, compared to afternoons and early evenings, considered ‘peak’ energy use times, when most households run dishwashers, clothes washers and other appliances.
Several brands of in-home displays connected to electric meters for tracking energy use and pricing information are currently available. These devices will likely become popular as consumers try to save money by understanding how many kilowatt-hours it takes to run the dishwasher or other appliances, and the best time of the day to do so.
Automation technology advances include X10, a language developed by IBM that allows lights, doorbells, and more to talk to each other. Small boxes plugged in a home’s electric sockets, controlled through a website or some other portal, use existing wiring to notify selected devices when to turn on or off .
“A lot of different components need to go into a smart home, but most are just in the demonstration or theoretical phase at this point,” explains Bob Gibson, principal program manager with the Cooperative Research Network, an arm of Arlington, Va.-based National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA).

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