A contractor for Seattle City Light stopped by my house today, to install my ‘smart’ meter (for metering electricity usage). I see the device is from a Swiss vendor Landis+Gyr.
‘The meter will last you 20 years or more’, said the technician. (OK. But if vastly better technology becomes available, I’m sure it will be replaced).
Why a smart meter? The meter beams its readings to a collector tower nearby, and to the utility from there. So no more driving around by meter readers (that get bitten by the dog, or cannot get to the meter). The meter will automatically notify Seattle City Light of outages. Finally, once all the back-end systems are in place, customers (me) would be able to monitor their electricity usage remotely and in real time.