An interval meter is a digital meter that is capable of recording your energy use on an hourly basis. This hourly interval data is necessary to calculate your electricity costs, as the electricity prices change hourly. Your new meter might also be an AMR (automatic meter reading) meter, which means it can be read remotely. It is not necessary to have an AMR meter for the PSP program.
The most useful display on your meter is the “02” display. To estimate whether your bill is reflecting what the meter is displaying, you will need to note and record the “02” readings (total kWh) close to the dates that your meter is read. Then by subtracting the previous reading (near the time of the previous meter reading) from the current reading (near the time of the current meter reading), you get the total number of kWh used between the dates you read the meter. You can then compare that to the total number of kWh you see on your bill. These should be close.
This data, called instantaneous data, is not one of the displays on your meter. The type of communicating meter (a Smart Meter) required to do this is significantly more expensive than the interval meter. It is possible that in the future, these types of meters and/or additional equipment may become available that would allow this and other features. We will be keeping an eye out for any developments on this front, and will keep you informed.
September 18, 2008
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5 comments:
What interval meter is being used for this program?
I am not sure of the exact brand or kind of interval meter being distributed to Power Smart Pricing customers, but you can check out these couple of links for more details.
http://www.powersmartpricing.org/faq/about-your-electric-meter/
http://www.ameren.com/Residential/ADC_FAQs_AMR.asp
Thank you for the info. I would still like to find out what brand/type of meter is being used. My experience so far is that interval meters are more expensive. Do you have a contact at Ameren that I could follow up with?
So I did a little extra digging, and the meters themselves vary in brand, but the communicating technology in the AMR's and AMI's is manufactured by Landis+Gyr. Keep in mind that in terms of becoming a participant the meter exchange is free of charge.
mine is an Alpha A3 on a single phase form 2S base. I think that they (Ameren) need to change AMI systems from CellNet to a true 2 way system so we can have more real time info. Info is great, but 30 day old info is about useless. I don't even remember what happened yesterday. There are AMI systems out there that will allow data transfer to an inhome gateway that will give me almost instantaneous data...now that's info we can use.
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