Homeowner complains about smart meters inconsistent electricity usage readings

Most of you have smart meters reading your electricity use everyday. It allows a utility to remotely monitor your usage without a meter reader coming to your home.

But Carol Ferrari said her smart meter was very inconsistent.

She showed me pages of electrical usage readings from her Phoenix home late last summer.

They were done at different times each day, sometimes hours apart.

Carol says her utility, SRP, promised that the meter would be read the same time every day. And she says, there were many days with no actual readings made at all.

In one month, she counted 14 days with actual readings and 17 with just estimates of her usage.

Carol takes her electricity use very seriously. She hasn't used her air conditioning unit for 18 years. A fan and a small cooler get her through Phoenix summers.

And, she says, it's hard trying to conserve energy when she doesn't know just what her real electricity usage is day by day.

Recently Carol says her readings have changed. She says they have been consistent every day.

So we took her situation to SRP asking what happened and could it happen again.

SRP tells us Carol's "concern then about estimated daily meter reads was a legitimate one initially, but that was before our infrastructure upgrade was completed."

The utility also gave Carol "a $10 customer service gesture in August to let her know that they understood her concerns."

Read SRP's full statement and more about their smart meter program.

APS also says most of it's customers have smart meters. Read about their smart meter program.

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