Lots of good responses to this question...."smart meters" are not really anything new, just "smarter". Terms like OMR (Offsite Meter Reading), AMR (Automated Meter Reading), etc. have been in the utility vocabulary for quite a while. Remote meter reading has been around for over 20 years, starting with meters such as "Turtle" (Hunt Technologies), which transmitted meter readings over the power line (called Power Line Carrier). Slow and not what I'd call reliable. Readings were gathered at a substation receiver and then sent to the utility by phone. Pretty crude. Modern meters send data by radio, cell phone or network types of communication. Meters can store and record Kwh, demand, outages, loss of phase, inversions (reverse power), removal (loss of power and concurrent tilt), etc. and can also perform remote disconnects using internal relays. Problem is that the information is coming in at a fast rate and huge amounts of data have to be dealt with. Most utilities don't have the time or resources to monitor each meter and record any changes on a short term basis. Bottom line.....a utility would drive themselves nuts responding to every alarm the meters are capable of transmitting. Smart metering is a great idea, but the technology is way beyond the ability of most utilities to respond. But......I never said that, and I will dis-avow any knowledge about alarms being ignored on a regular basis!:happyyes:
SCE will roll a line patrolman if one is available for a single meter
going down, especially in certain electricity theft prone areas.
SCE's response time from remotely enabling a meter, to the meter
closing is around ten or fifteen minutes or so... seems that is the refresh rate.
the biggest hits are the illegal growing operations. they usually go around the
metering section, 'cause a huge electrical bill in a building that never used
much historically, is a red flag, and the usage is reported to the police.
there have been some recently that zorched the cans up on the poles with the
current flow.
http://ktla.com/2015/02/04/sophisti...-discovered-inside-vacant-santa-ana-building/
so they know if the shuttle craft fails to ping the mother ship pretty quickly.
for the last couple years, if i'm going to down a service, i get the utility bill,
and call SCE, and have them flag the account so nobody comes out. i always
offer my license number, they don't want it. just my phone number. i call
back when i'm done, and release the clearance, so to speak.