FPL is in full swing installing Smart Meters around Southwest Florida.I had mine installed last week, but the communications network is a work in progress, so there’s no benefit to me yet. Despite all of the complaints and fears about Smart Meters, I believe the benefits will be great, allowing a granular look at your energy consumption down to your hourly usage, all available from FPL’s website. It’s not as good as some of the energy monitors on the market that can give you a per-second look at your consumption, or even monitor individual appliances or circuits, but it will provide significant insight into your electricity usage.

Some claim that the meters are bad for our health, are inaccurate, or disorient bees. Seriously!

I’m not going to make a call whether some of the claims out there are accurate, but I can tell you one thing for certain – understanding your energy consumption by learning when you use energy is key to reducing your utility bills. As my father-in-law says, “just like a business, you can’t manage energy without an accounting system.”

Unfortunately, those with solar electric systems that are under a netmetering agreement will not get the new smart meters. It is unclear whether the meters are bi-directional, or whether FPL or the manufacturer just hasn’t tested the accuracy measuring energy fed back to the grid. I’m trying to get clarification on that matter from FPL and will let you know if I hear back from their netmetering department.

Here’s a video from FPL about the new Smart Meters: