I'm excited about our new power meter that has been installed. We just had Delta, our local multi-utility service contractor around the side of our house swapping out the run-of-the-mill old skool meter for a new-fangled box.
What's so special about a new meter and why do we need one? That's the exciting part. This new meter is a "Genesis Energy Advanced Meter". We aren't one of those homes with a spining kWh wheel anymore as we have a digital readout showing our current consumption, consumption to date plus some other less interesting figures. But I'm not at the exciting part yet! It's on the mobile network. The meter itself has an RJ45 connector running to a 3G device that uses the mobile network to communicate with Genesis HQ. This is real machine to machine (M2M) technology.
David from Delta tells me it talks back to base (via the Mobile Network) a couple of times a day and uses about a quarter of a text message a time - I asume 40 characters. Sure beats estimates and having to send a guy out to read the meter. I can even log into the Genesis website and see my usage - live!
In the end I'm not surprised that they have implemented this technology. With the ubiquity of mobile technology, reliability of mobile technology and the decreases in cost over time it was inevitable. Still exciting though - huh?
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