Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
with devices to control electric appliances remotely. Not all trials of smart
meters have gone down well with consumers, who sometimes see smart
metering as just enabling energy companies to cut personnel costs and to
make it easier for the companies to cut off power to customers in arrears
on bill payments
.
The responsiveness of people to energy-pricing incentives is also often
overestimated - look at the way people go on buying petrol no matter
what the price is. But overall the trials show
,
according to US Department
of Energy officials, that smart metering can cut peak electricity demand
by as much as fifteen percent, by either shifting it in time or reducing it
in volume.
