Recently, I filled in a survey regarding the use of a smart meter for water usage which I am guessing was initiated by Sydney Water to help them get a feel for the demand for such a service.
For those of you who don’t know about smart meters, they replace your analogue meter with a digital one which comes with some extra perks which may or may not include the following:
- a remote digital display which can be placed inside the house,
- some form of alarming (like leak detection for water meters),
- perhaps a form of usage history available on the Internet,
- access to peak and off peak pricing.
Now, there are also perks for the water, gas and electricity companies. The biggest one would have to be that they would no longer require “meter people” to go down every street and manually read all the meters. That would translate into some sort of cost saving I would assume.
With electricity and water prices going up, could this perhaps be something worthwhile?
I don’t think it’s such a bad idea but I don’t fancy being slugged with a fee to use such a service. Things have come a long way since the invention of analogue meters and I think anything that can improve the conscientious use of our resources can only be a good thing. I don’t know of anyone that regularly checks their meters apart from what is stated on the bill when it arrives in the mail (or electronically in my case).
Particularly with water leaks, the problem can go undetected for weeks until the next bill (unless it is severe enough to affect water pressure) to notice something out of the ordinary. Alerting the water authority in these cases could probably yield significant savings of a precious resource.
Until these authorities get their act together in Australia, you can get a device like the Envi R from Current Cost which works with Google PowerMeter through the use of a bridge to keep track of your energy usage and stick to a budget if you need to rein things in.
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