Smart meters? Look at your electric bill first
![zd-defaultauthor-john-dodge.jpg](https://www.zdnet.com/a/img/resize/856a5e12ae7d3f7342074ce8f210a85d618dc134/2014/12/04/bad19344-7b69-11e4-9a74-d4ae52e95e57/zd-defaultauthor-john-dodge.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&frame=1&height=192&width=192)
I have not researched much about smart appliances or smart meters (I will, though, having covered that genre of product for the past five years or so), but I have done one very smart thing and that is examine and understand my electric bill. In fact, two years ago, I blogged about how "I cut my electric bill in half" (the post's headline) by installing compact fluorescent bulbs and shutting off the the hot tub which we rarely used.
A combination of easy conservation and using more efficient devices did the trick. The proof is in the numbers:from January to April, 2007, our household usage dropped from an embarrassing 1,841 kilowatt hours to a 758. Hey, the kids were home from college and because they don't pay the bills, they were not terribly concerned about conservation.
Better yet, our bill dropped from $307 in January to $127 in April and we've been closer to the lower number and even under it ever since.
So it was with great interest that I listened to the various venture capitalists in the video here debate the merits of smart meters. One spent $2,500 on a smart meter for his new green home and made the following observation: "You get a smart meter and it tells you all this stuff but so what." Indeed!
Some of the information provided by a smart meter can be found on your monthly snail mail electric bill and in understanding which appliances are energy hogs. So before you entertain the idea of installing a smart meter, reap the low-hanging fruit that can be found in the numbers on your electric bill.
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This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com