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In California, the three largest utilities do charge hourly rate * hourly consumption. There are "Peak" "Partial Peak" and "Off Peak" periods defined by summer

by ghouse 8y ago

In California, the three largest utilities do charge hourly rate * hourly consumption. There are "Peak" "Partial Peak" and "Off Peak" periods defined by summer/winter and weekday/weekend. Paper bills as well as utility websites will show how much electricity (kWh) are used during each period. Websites will also show hour by hour usage.

pfranz 8y ago
How widely implemented is it? I lived in Los Angeles for over a decade, lived in half a dozen places (moving between Glendale Water and Power and LADWP). A few years ago, when shopping for houses all over the LA area I would peek to see if they had smart meters, too. I've only seen a few and never lived anywhere that had them. There may have been seasonal price changes with dumb meters, but they couldn't have done weekday/weekend without them. Smart water meters seemed to have decent distribution. Perhaps because of the droughts?
- kenhwang 8y ago
  I believe most of Edison moved over to smart meters, and they're the biggest provider in SoCal. LADWP is rolling it out at a snail's pace.
  - pfranz 8y ago
    That's good to know. Edison always showed up when looking for programs like solar or a smart thermostat, LADWP never did. I just never lived anywhere serviced by Edison. Looking at their service map, it looks like Edison covers everywhere around LA/Glendale and covers a very large area all the way to the Nevada and Arizona border. I wonder if there's a better cost/benefit for rolling it out to a sparsely populated (or dense pockets with large areas in between)? Where LADWP may favor new construction or something?
    - kenhwang 8y ago
      Edison pretty much charges 2-3x more for peak usage, 30% more for "off-peak", and 20% less for sleeping hours compared to LADWP depending on tier. So they made a bunch more money since people don't just suddenly shift all their electricity usage to after midnight. I remember there being a lot of outage when they rolled out smart metering since most people had pretty drastic increases to their electric bill.

by ghouse 8y ago

pfranz 8y ago

How widely implemented is it? I lived in Los Angeles for over a decade, lived in half a dozen places (moving between Glendale Water and Power and LADWP). A few years ago, when shopping for houses all over the LA area I would peek to see if they had smart meters, too. I've only seen a few and never lived anywhere that had them. There may have been seasonal price changes with dumb meters, but they couldn't have done weekday/weekend without them. Smart water meters seemed to have decent distribution. Perhaps because of the droughts?

kenhwang 8y ago
I believe most of Edison moved over to smart meters, and they're the biggest provider in SoCal. LADWP is rolling it out at a snail's pace.
- pfranz 8y ago
  That's good to know. Edison always showed up when looking for programs like solar or a smart thermostat, LADWP never did. I just never lived anywhere serviced by Edison. Looking at their service map, it looks like Edison covers everywhere around LA/Glendale and covers a very large area all the way to the Nevada and Arizona border. I wonder if there's a better cost/benefit for rolling it out to a sparsely populated (or dense pockets with large areas in between)? Where LADWP may favor new construction or something?
  - kenhwang 8y ago
    Edison pretty much charges 2-3x more for peak usage, 30% more for "off-peak", and 20% less for sleeping hours compared to LADWP depending on tier. So they made a bunch more money since people don't just suddenly shift all their electricity usage to after midnight. I remember there being a lot of outage when they rolled out smart metering since most people had pretty drastic increases to their electric bill.