Smart Meters, Yay!!!

[Shootin 4 Fun]

Maybe they will use the meters for good. Maybe they'll offer rebates to those who have older inefficient appliances. I have a newer home that's larger than most and our electric bill only runs about $125-$150 in the summer months.

 

[Nraman]

Maybe they will use the meters for good. Maybe they'll offer rebates to those who have older inefficient appliances. I have a newer home that's larger than most and our electric bill only runs about $125-$150 in the summer months.

Sorry, don't like it. Somebody will have to pay for the rebates. Most likely they would offer rebates to the new appliance owners.
That is exactly what I am afraid will happen one day, they'll start creating classes of users and whoever doesn't meet what they consider proper, will be punished with higher rates.

 

[Shootin 4 Fun]

Sorry, don't like it. Somebody will have to pay for the rebates. Most likely they would offer rebates to the new appliance owners.
That is exactly what I am afraid will happen one day, they'll start creating classes of users and whoever doesn't meet what they consider proper, will be punished with higher rates.

Why would they offer rebates for new appliance tp homeowners who are already efficient? The benefit to the utility company in investing in the user is that it's more cost effective than investing in new production facilities. If we don't become more efficient we're all going to be punished with higher rates and I'd just as soon it be you rather than me if you don't have the good sense to modernize your home with energy efficient appliances, insulation, and windows/doors.

If you live in a 1200 sq ft home and your electric and gas bills are higher than someone that lives in a 3000 sq ft home then it's time to update.

 

[Nraman]

Why would they offer rebates for new appliance tp homeowners who are already efficient? The benefit to the utility company in investing in the user is that it's more cost effective than investing in new production facilities. If we don't become more efficient we're all going to be punished with higher rates and I'd just as soon it be you rather than me if you don't have the good sense to modernize your home with energy efficient appliances, insulation, and windows/doors.

If you live in a 1200 sq ft home and your electric and gas bills are higher than someone that lives in a 3000 sq ft home then it's time to update.

Most likely they would offer rebates to the new appliance owners.

Correction, make that read "to those who buy new appliances"
Best I remember they have done this in the past, they had some specials for those buying new efficient A/C units but not to any existing efficient A/C owners.

 

[TJay74]

Sorry, don't like it. Somebody will have to pay for the rebates. Most likely they would offer rebates to the new appliance owners.
That is exactly what I am afraid will happen one day, they'll start creating classes of users and whoever doesn't meet what they consider proper, will be punished with higher rates.

I agree 100% with what he is saying. Our (OGE) demand side management is the only way we will to be able to provide service and not have to increase rates on consumers. My home is 2500sq ft, built 1.5 years ago, we keep the AC set at 77 during the day and it drops to 75 at night, my last bill was $113 this billing cycle. I looked at my old house and it is only 1700sq ft and the bill was $180 last month. I dealt with a customer just today who's homes uses almost 40,000kwh per year, that is more than my home uses in about 2.5 years, yes you read that right 2.5 YEARS and his home was similar in size to mine with the same amount of people living in it.

That is a prime example of the target customer we will go after to help reduce excess consumtion that will help with demand side management.

 

[rhodesbe]

The most retarded thing about conspiracy theorists is that they always seem to be fearful of a nebulous, faceless enemy named things like 'The Fed', or 'Big Brother', or 'big oil', or 'the government'. The cold hard reality of things are that those vast 'faceless enemies' are composed of of the same idiotic, greedy people they are neighbors with, with the same paranoid interests and worries about the next guy.

I say all that to ask:

Do you really think that our local power utility company intends to spy on us?

If so, LOL @ you. Like they don't have enough on their plates already.

 

[Nraman]

That is a prime example of the target customer we will go after to help reduce excess consumtion that will help with demand side management.

That's what I'm talking about, what makes you think that you know if my consumption is "excessive" for my needs. Do I have to change my life to comply with your perception of what is right for me?
The city has been growing, either build extra capacity, or buy from elsewhere or whatever, you don't go to a growing city and threaten to penalize the customers that use your product. We never had such a problem years ago, is there some shortage on electrons and we have to conserve them?
Perhaps the system needs to change a bit to allow competition.

 

[TJay74]

That's what I'm talking about, what makes you think that you know if my consumption is "excessive" for my needs. Do I have to change my life to comply with your perception of what is right for me?
The city has been growing, either build extra capacity, or buy from elsewhere or whatever, you don't go to a growing city and threaten to penalize the customers that use your product. We never had such a problem years ago, is there some shortage on electrons and we have to conserve them?
Perhaps the system needs to change a bit to allow competition.

This is where you need to step off of the high pedestal you place yourself on and come back down to the real world. You do realize that to build a new power plant will run a minimum of $1 billion and take 5-7 years to build which wont do one thing for immediate demands. We are the largest electric utility company in the state and have no intentions of "buying" electricity from other companies. That would not be in our companies best interest or in our customers interest.

We do demand side management on a daily basis, "telling" high demand customer if they are using too much electricity and giving them the option to reduce load demand or else they pay a tariff if they continue to use at their current demand.

This has always been done on commercial customers, but we will see it soon roll over to residential is my guess for the same reason. Why should I be penalized because you want to be a energy hog and use 40,000kwh per year running every light, keeping the AC set at 68° and running a business in your home on a residential rate when you should be paying the higher business rate. Oh yeah residential customers are billed .$084 for the first 1400kwh during summer and $.096 after that, Commercial customers are billed at $.105 for everything they use.

So once again if you want to be a high demand user, that is fine. We reserve the right to know what you use, when you use, how much load you require at 1am on a Friday or 12pm on a Monday and we reserve the right to charge you more for that electricity if you cant curtail your usage and be more in line with the norm of customers we deal with each day.

 

[shady]

Ok I work for OGE and this guy is a freaking idiot who is just trying to incite mayhem and cause confusion.

We can remotely read, disconnect and reconnect the meters that have been replaced with smart meters. The meters takes reads in 15 minute increments so yes we can see spikes and or lulls in usage which helps us know when out peak load times are and when the non peak times are, this is called demand side management which helps us know if we have enough power to supply all of our customers so we dont end up like california did years ago.


Did you know that an electric utility company has to have enough reserve energy on hand that if the largest producing power plant was taken off line that we can still supply enough electricity to handle our normal load and then some? Where do you think this info comes from, just random guesses and such?

This metering technology not only will help us with metering and billing but it also tells us issues with in our system like over/under voltage, tempatures inside of the meter base which could indicate a potential failure due to high load demands at the address which in turn could either damage the meter and or potentially cause a customer home to catch on fire, all of that info is relayed to us form the meter now.

Once the smart meters are deployed thru our entire area we will have real time info on outage, exactly who's homes are out and the cusotmers will not have to call in to report the outage anymore since we will already know this info.

and on the side note of trying to refuse to accept a smart meter at your home, sure you can try. You can refuse and you can get your attorney. In the end you will lose the fight, we will either pull your meter until you agree to accept the meter or you will sit in the hot/cold/dark without electricity until you agree to having the meter on the home. This is the metering technology we use now, it was accepted by the State of OK and approved by them. We lead the country in our goal to be energy conservative and to do our part in making sure we are not wasting energy. It takes money, time and resources to make electricity.

if we have to build a new plant before 2020 the rates increases will be so large that no cusotmer in OK will be happy at all, rough estimate is $1 billion for one new plant. It is bad enough right now we are trying to fight the EPA on the new clean air act. That act alone if we are forced to comply will add about $1 billion in costs for us to retro each of our power plants to meet their requirements, once again costs that will be directly passed onto the rate payers.

So this is why this guy is an idiot, he knows nothing other than a tin foil theory that he hopes to get people all sitrred up over.

Spoken like a TRUE OG&E MANAGER

 

[carleb]

That's what I'm talking about, what makes you think that you know if my consumption is "excessive" for my needs. Do I have to change my life to comply with your perception of what is right for me?
The city has been growing, either build extra capacity, or buy from elsewhere or whatever, you don't go to a growing city and threaten to penalize the customers that use your product. We never had such a problem years ago, is there some shortage on electrons and we have to conserve them?
Perhaps the system needs to change a bit to allow competition.

Well yeah, actually there is a shortage of electrons - at any given instant. Increasing capacity is very, very expensive and consumers are who is going to pay for it. Time of use is where it's at. Electricity providers want to sell Kwh, not Kw, so consumers are going to have to figure out ways to use more electricity in low demand times and less at peak demand times.

Simplistic answers to complex problems. If you want to use more electricity during peak times, you're gonna pay for it. Anyone that insists on using more electricity during the peak demand times is gonna pay a premium. Competition is only a little tiny bit of the issue.