One of the problems to homeowners is that the power company will have ability to control your thermostat.
I have heard that before but I don't see how it would work, nothing on an outside "smart" meter could affect only your central heat, short of cutting all power to your residence. Now if there is a special thermostat they want to install that would an entirely different issue (and easy enough to circumvent as you can override the thermostat entirely by fiddling with a couple wires in your furnace - I had a bad thermostat once and being too cheap to replace it I wired up a simple $2 Radioshack on/off toggle switch). Not to mention you could always easily circumvent any power company meddling just by purchasing a couple plug in space heaters.
The “Smart Meter” has nothing to do with controlling anything. It’s only a unit similar to the old meters, but can transmit the useage information directly to the Electricity supplier for billing opposed to a meter reader coming on your property to read the meter once a month.
The “reader” lost his/her job, and that translates into BIG savings for the Electric supply company.
We like it as it means we don’t have to leave our gates open for the meter reading once a month.
There is an option available you can have the electric supply company install a device on your a/c if you wish to have them control your electrical useage during the hot Summer months thus, decrease useage, and decrease your electrical costs, but that’s totally separate from the “Smart Meter”. NOW THAT IS SOMETHING I WOULD NOT ALLOW THEM TO INSTALL ON MY A/C as I will control my useage, and my comfort level, not someone with a chart in an air conditioned office they don’t have to pay the costs for.
They do already. It's called the off switch. During the coldest days a couple years ago, they feared too much power was going to be used so they randomly were switching off power for 20 minutes throughout the area. Problem was, they'd either forget to turn it back on or when they did the surge blew transmitters. I don't think they'll be doing that again anytime soon.
The smart meters install around here just allow them to read the meter remotely. Your thermostat is not connected in any to the meter. There is a separate device that is not wire to the thermostat but to just the AC unit. I had one in my last house and got a 20% discount on my electricity in the summer months. They had no idea what my thermostat settings were. I had and older non-digital one at the time. During high use times they could turn off the power to just AC and it would be just for an hour. I didn’t cool my whole house most of the time and rarely turned the main AC on. I had a room size AC installed in my bedroom and cooled just that room. It was plugged into the wall and it could not be turned off.
The problem with smart meters is they can read them every 15 minutes and can tell when you are using electricity. The possibility is they will try to charge you more if you use too much at certain times. .
No, you are thinking of the "Smart Grid" a Smart Meter is just a meter that is read via a signal rather than a guy physically walking on your property and reading it.
One of the problems to homeowners is that the power company will have ability to control your thermostat.
Only if you don’t pay your power bill, then they cut off your power, the smart meters allows the company to read your meter remotely instead of the meter reader having to enter the reading manually, also in case of a power outage, the company knows what area the power is out, save a lot of time and money not having to drive around looking for downed wires and such. the meter operate on the same system as cell phones and wireless routers that most of us have already, so I don’t see any problems there, I guess fear of new things and lack of knowledge is the fear factor for some people, anyway, not to worry