Just sharing the fact that my local power company is deploying smart meters (on a trial basis). I signed up and got one installed yesterday. With the meter, they give homeowners a small LCD display to monitor power usage, in the same way (only FAR less sophisticated) as TED-5000. FYI, the display shows electricity in kW (e.g. “0.6 kW”), so it’s impossible to calculate exactly how many watts a particular light or device is using. For that, I’ll continue relying on my Kill-A-Watt.
Naturally, the stand-alone handheld display – which communicates with the outdoor meter via Zigbee wireless – does not offer any data ports for connecting to, say, a PC or Vera controller. Its firmware was designed by HAI, a company I greatly respect.
If only Vera could be made to communicate with my Smart Meter somehow. I understand (from earlier forum posts) that this is extremely unlikely, based on the sheer number of Zigbee stack “flavors” in the wild, and the assumption that the utility company doesn’t exactly broadcast “raw” data over-the-air.
Whether my present situation warrants NOT buying a TED-5000 remains to be seen. I’d sure like more “granularity of data” on the remote display, but the darn thing’s obviously engineered for the average person, not a home automation freak like me. 