Georgia Power: putting customer convenience and utility last! Let’s compare how Georgia Power is “selling” its smart meters to how one of the leaders in smart metering in Europe does it. Let’s compare Finland to Georgia Power. The result may give you reason to vote in the Public Service Commissioner election going on right now.

Current Smart Meter customer benefits include:

With the Smart Meter program, your electric meter will be read remotely through communication towers. In the future, a number of new customer benefits will become available, including access to online energy usage information.

• Reading your meter and generating your bill without having a representative visit your property on a regular basis.
• Reducing the time needed to handle service orders, such as starting or stopping power.
• Remotely checking a meter to ensure it is working properly.
• Reducing the number of vehicles on the road resulting in less pollution and fuel saving because in-person meter readings are not required.
• Power outage notification — In the event of a power outage in your area, Smart Meters help us better manage power restoration.

Future Smart Meter benefits include:

• Accessing energy usage information online — view your hourly and daily usage.
• Offering innovative rate options that meet your lifestyle — better manage your energy usage and control your energy bill.

All of the immediate benefits are tailored for the power company, not the customer. Sure, you might like not having a Georgia Power employee on your property, but the real benefit is to Georgia Power in reducing costs. The direct benefits to the customer are all deferred to some unspecified time in the future.

Meanwhile, for Finland, Look at page 32 of this report: European Smart Metering Landscape Report, by Stephan Renner, Mihaela Albu, Henk van Elburg, Christoph Heinemann, Artur Łazicki, Lauri Penttinen, Francisco Puente, Hanne Sæle, smartregions.net, Vienna, February 2011,

There are some minimum functional requirements for the metering system defined by the regulator in Finland:

• Remotely readable hourly interval measurement data available next day to market actors including the customer;
• If requested by the customer, the DSO must deliver metering equipment that has standardised connection for real-time hourly based monitoring;
• Consumer must receive the data at the latest when the electricity seller receives it;