Replies

Smart meters are primarily about forcing people to pay more for electricity during the day. People who work at home and home school are going to get royally screwed.

Nope, smartmeters are primarily about taxation. It is about increasing the revenue to local governments while state governments swallow up their traditional source of income. Since 'The People' are starting to get ticked off about other revenue streams (see red light cameras, speed cameras, right turn cameras, huge traffic fines, etc...) and are less willing to cough up more dough (see failures at the ballot box), the goal is to increase the revenue going to local city coffers by making it far easier to target businesses with utility tax hikes.

As for residentials, home schoolers and work at homes honestly are a drop in the bucket when you compare them to the percentage of elderly who are at home throughout the day who are using air conditioning for their comfort. While programs will 'help' them somewhat on the bills, they'd much rather force them out of their homes during the day and into senior community centers - another great way of skimming money into the city budget.

As it stands now, a person who is inclined to enterprise should be thinking about selling battery packs that recharge at night during the low rate times, and release their power during the high rate times of the day. You've both residential and the soon to be hard targetted commercial customers to go after, and the technical challenges shouldn't be that great.

Smart meters are primarily about forcing people to pay more for electricity during the day.
****************************************************
They are actually for..

1.) recording very small usage levels ... mechanical meters do this poorly and often don’t register all usage.
2.) avoiding the inaccuracies mech meters accrue as they age. (usually due to braking magnets weakening or changes in magnetism due to lightning and such)
3.) reducing meter reading costs ... many can be remote read ,, the ones that must be eyeballed are faster to read as they don’t have the dials to interpret.