Smart meters are being deployed throughout the US.  In Dallas, our Transmission & Distribution company – Oncor is pressing more than 3 million meters into service by the end of 2012.  I already have a smart meter at my home and noticed a surcharge of $2.19 every month on my electricity bill.  This led me to ask the question – “What are these smart meters doing for us?”.  Here are a few things that I came up with.

  • Smart meters use metering ICs such as the MSP430F67xx to measure the energy consumed.  This allows for extremely accurate measurements and bills.
  • Smart meters in Texas have a <1-GHz radio such as TI’s CC1101 to communicate with the utility.  Energy consumption data is sent to a data concentrator in the field that aggregates data from multiple meters before sending it back to the utility.  With a smart meter, the utility company no longer has to send out meter readers to your house.  The smart meters also enable the utility to instantly know when there is a power outage.  Gone are the days when you had to call the utility to report an outage. 
  • The utility can also send signals to your meter.  These might include Time of Use (TOU) or Demand Response (DR) signals that can help utilities shed peak loads.  However, another signal the utility can send to your meter is the remote disconnect signal.  So make sure you pay your bill on time.
  • SmartMeterTexas.com is a portal that is sponsored by a consortium of utilities in Texas.  This site processes information received from your smart meter and provides you energy consumption data in 15-minute increments.  You can also review your daily and monthly usage to gain an understanding of usage patterns and come up with energy conservation ideas.  SmartMeterTexas.com can also be used to commission and decommission Home Area Network (HAN) devices such as In Home Displays (IHDs) and Smart Thermostats.  Although energy consumption data from the smart meter is sent to the utility several times a day, it takes around 2 days for this data to show up on the Smart Meter Texas portal.  This is apparently because the portal has to validate and format the data per certain guidelines before presenting it to consumers.  A similar nationwide initiative called Green Button will make energy consumption data accessible to smart meter users in many more parts of the country. 
  • The Smart Meters have another IC such as the CC2530 running the ZigBee Smart Energy Profile.  This is for communication with HAN devices such as IHDs.  The IHD can connect directly to the Smart Meter and display energy consumption information in near real-time.  Devices such as smart thermostats, smart appliances, and load controllers can receive TOU or DR signals to reduce peak loads.  Some Retail Electricity Providers (REPs) provide incentives if you enrol in a demand response program.  Time of use pricing can help consumers directly shave many dollars off their monthly electricity bill.  An indirect benefit of smart meters is that we can avoid the cost of building extra generation capacity just to supply these peak demands. 

Some benefits of Smart Meters are obvious while others are indirect.  As we head into the summer season, these smart meters can be pivotal in keeping our cooling costs under control by increasing our energy consumption awareness.  Smart meters can also eliminate the need for mechanisms such as rolling blackouts currently used to reduce peak energy demand.  I feel that my smart meter is definitely worth every penny of the $2.19 I am charged every month.

What do you think?  What has your smart meter done for you lately?

Prasad Dhond, Marketing Manager, Smart Grid Solutions, Texas Instruments Inc.