Do you remember a couple of months ago when customers had their electric meters upgraded to “smart grid” versions, only to see their electric bills double or triple? And then, when customers complained, do you remember how the electric companies told them that it wasn’t due to meter malfunctions, it just happened to be cold [...]
The road to a smart grid is apparently bumpy and very expensive. Oncor, a Texas utility provider, recently rolled out over 750,000 smart meters to its customers. And its timing couldn’t be worse. According to some customers, the smart meters are over-charging them for electricity, with one woman seeing her bill quadruple to 4,400 kWh [...]
If you read yesterday’s post on monitoring your smart appliances with new gadgets from the Consumer Electronics Show, you may have been left wondering, “What if I don’t want to replace all of my dumb appliances?” I know I was. Well, leave it to CES to solve problems created by CES. The Picowatt, shown in [...]
The Consumer Electronics Show is a yearly excuse for just about everyone to geek out. It’s no surprise that the focus on energy efficiency and home management caught my eye. First up, Home Energy Manager promises to put your bloated house on an energy diet. By linking to a series of smart monitors in each [...]
From the network that brought you “Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader?” comes a new sitcom titled “My Refrigerator Beats Me at Chess.” Okay, so I made that up, but companies are feverishly working to make all of our home appliances “smarter” by adding unit-level meters with network capabilities. The idea is that during [...]
