"$5,152 Power Bill? Texas winter storm Hell only gets worse."

[Massacure]

13. Smart meters

There has been an effort in many utilities to install smart meters, which allow two way communication between the meter and the utilities information technology systems. Utilities will ping the meter every couple of minutes, and the meter will respond back indicating whether or not it is energized and/or a a reading of how much electricity has flown through it. Some utilities allow customers to view this data as soon as it is received, particularly if the customer is on time-of-day pricing.

Smart meters increase reliability and reduce costs. Utilities do not need to send out people to physically read meters nor do they need to send out techs to connect/disconnect meters (whether that be for non-payment or other reasons). Additionally, data fed into demand management systems and outage management systems are analyzed and allow utilities to more quickly identify the cause of outages and to conduct corrective maintenance before small issues become big ones.