What are Smart Meters?
Smart meters keep track of your energy usage in 15 minute chunks. They then alert your utility about the power needs in your area. That way is your utility stops receiving a signal from your meter, then they know you aren’t getting power. That way, they can respond faster even if you’re not home to know about it. As a result grid controllers and your utility know where energy is going and at what time. But what are the Pennsylvania electricity rules for smart meters, anyway?
Why do I need a Smart Meter?
The Pennsylvania Energy Act 129 (2008) requires the local utilities to supply customers with smart meters. All seven Pennsylvania local utility companies (PECO, Duquesne, PennElec, West Penn, Penn Power, PPL, and Met-Ed) are required to create energy efficient plans to reduce energy usage. One part of those plans is deploy Smart Meters.
How Do I Opt Out of Smart Meters.
Unfortunately, Pennsylvania law requires utilities to use smart meters measure home usage. The PUC PA specifies that all consumers must have a Smart Meter. As a result, customers must have a smart meter as a condition of service from your local utility. This also means all PA electricity consumers must pay the Smart Meter surcharge. Utilities will add it to monthly bills until they are fully deployed around 2023. Of course, the surcharge is a pass through fee. Each local utility has its own meter cost recovery plan that must be approved by the PA PUC.
PA Smart Meters Benefit You
One of the big problems with sending electricity over wires is “line loss”. This comes from the wire’s natural resistance to electricity. When wire resists the movement of electricity it gives off heat. The longer the wire, the more electrical resistance, and the more heat it produces. On hot summer days when there’s high demand for electricity, power lines sag because they are getting hotter and hotter. If they sag low enough to touch a tree, they can short out and cause a blackout.
Another problem with moving electricity during high demand periods is constraint. Because power lines get hot and stretch, they can only handle so much electricity at one time. Sometimes, grid dispatchers must route a lot of power through a power line that can’t handle the full load. When that happens, generators must wait to transmit their electricity. As a result, generator get paid thousands of dollars to wait.
Smart meters allow your local utility to track demand and usage of energy. Grid dispatchers can send electricity the most efficient route to the area that needs it most. Smart meters also eliminate the need for people to go house to house to read meters. They also do a better way of stopping electricity theft. So in the long haul, smart meters help keep electricity rates lower.
Track Your Own Usage and Save!
If you’re trying to cut your electric usage, tracking your electric usage in fifteen minute blocks can be very useful. And that’s especially true if you’re using it to cut back on home energy hogs. Unfortunately, smart meters use a different wireless protocal to communicate with your utilty. That’s why you can’t communicate directly with yoru smart meter using your smart device or computer. However, many Pennsylvanian electricity suppliers provide up to date information about your usage through your o line account. With the information of your usage, you can use electricity rates to predict how much you’ll spend.
For information on energy providers that help you power your home more affordably this way, check out https://www.paenergyratings.com.
2 thoughts on “What are the Rules for Smart Meters in Pennsylvania?”
I want to know if there’s any harmful effects to our bodies due to using a smart meter on our house and how to protect ourselves from this as well as are there any hidden harmful effects to our body and any part of our animity
Hi Bill,
To be brief: no.
As yet, there is no convincing research that has confirmed health problems due due to short-term or long-term exposure to radio frequency (RF). There were two studies 14 years ago that suggested “an association” to a specific type of brain cancer due to cell phone usage. But since then, the research has been mainly inconclusive and the findings not repeated from individual to individual.
Smart meters have very little power and don’t broadcast all the time. They chirp. Over a 24 hour period that adds up to less then 15 minutes. And at 1 foot away, the strength of that emission is 0.14% of the FCC’s Maximum Permissible Exposure limit (roughly, .14% of 1 watt per kg of tissue). Given that most smart meters are mounted on an outside wall that’s about 5 inches thick, you might be hard pressed find a signal at all.
Plus, our home environments are jammed full of radio frequency signal sources: microwaves, cell phones, wifi, bluetooth, interference from transformers, even electric motors. Many of these signal sources overlap. And that excludes more powerful radio signal sources from TV, radio, power lines, or the Amazon delivery truck across the street.
I have yet to hear of any case involving any of these much more powerful and wide spread signals.
— cheers