Smart Meter

[randomq]

The discipline is to use less power, and time your heavy use with your battery capacity and the weather, so you can get away with a smaller more affordable system.

[kalianna]

I'm not sure that discipline is the right word, but I understand your point. Assuming that work obligations and family demands allow you the luxury of choosing when you do your laundry.

[terracore]

Just opt out, people. It doesn't take that much cash or discipline to go off-grid. Or go primarily solar and keep your grid tie just for occasional charging.

Not a bad idea.  Grid tie systems are 6x more expensive than they need to be.  It's cheaper not to force our 19th century electricity distribution system to flow in directions it was never invented to do.  But that's not what the utility companies want.  They want to be billing companies that outsource the power production to millions of rooftops and pay a revolving door of "we're the cheapest" contractors to barely maintain aging infrastructure.  

It works until it doesn't.

[Deckman]

Our smart meter was installed Feb 1. When reading my data this past month it shows 3X the normal usage from 8:45 a.m. to 9:45 a.m. every Friday. Only on Fridays! I hate that you have to wait 2 days to see your usage. So when I looked on Sunday to see last Friday's use it had 0 Kwh for the first half hour and over 2.0 Kwh second have hour. Then back to normal to .2 or .3 Kwh per half hour use. Today there are no 0 usage for Friday which leads me to believe someone is messing with the numbers. Has anyone noticed strange use patterns in their data?

[terracore]

I spent a few minutes on their web site trying to retrieve such data for our smart meter and the web site appears to be designed to obfuscate any useful data. It is the opposite of intuitive, it appears to be specifically designed to frustrate.
I gave up.

[AaronM]

Remember, HellCo loves you.

[Obie]

I got an email last week with the following subject line :

"Compare rates through your My Energy Use portal"

There are about 3 links in the email to take you to your energy use page. One didn't work at all and the other two just take me to my dashboard and there are no rates to compare. Also my dashboard tells me my meter quit being smart on April 1 and they don't know why but they are working on it.

[terracore]

I got an email last week with the following subject line :

"Compare rates through your My Energy Use portal"

There are about 3 links in the email to take you to your energy use page. One didn't work at all and the other two just take me to my dashboard and there are no rates to compare. Also my dashboard tells me my meter quit being smart on April 1  and they don't know why but they are working on it.

Remember, HellCo loves you.

[Gus]

This morning the site was down totally. When I called to complain that the numbers were wrong, the reply was “How can they be wrong? They’re only estimates. It says that in small print.” So apparently the purpose of the meter is to make up numbers, and you will pay whatever they tell you to.

[Obie]

I got this reply to an email I sent them :
Thank you for your inquiry.
We apologize for the email about rate comparisons.
We are piloting a new Time of Use rate structure starting this summer and this email may have inadvertently been sent to you.
We apologize for any confusion this email may have caused.Should you need further assistance please reply to this email or call Customer Service at phone number for your home island below; Monday – Friday 7:30 am – 6:00 pm and Saturday 7:30 am – 4:00 pm excluding holidays.Mahalo,NoeCustomer Care Representative – Hawaiian Electric Companies