News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Teardown of a $1.25 LED Lightbulb. Parent comment

Re:Teardown of a $1.25 LED Lightbulb by yjftsjthsd-h on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @01:00PM (#22368121)
Were smart meters about saving energy? I sorta assumed they were just there to make things easier on the power company. Although I suppose if it means that a person doesn't have to drive a car to every meter every month, that's probably a win.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Teardown of a $1.25 LED Lightbulb by bcrosby95 on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @02:09PM (#22368884)
I think they can help with saving energy indirectly: by letting power companies give customers more detailed information about their usage. But I don't know how often people take advantage of this.

I've shaved off around .15 kwh of energy that was used 24/7 ($25/month in California) based upon usage information from our energy company.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Teardown of a $1.25 LED Lightbulb by joezydeco on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @02:56PM (#22369399)
My 'smart meter' is Zigbee enabled, and I own an adapter that spits out data from the meter in XML format. I can see power consumption with ~400 Watt resolution every 10 seconds without messing around in my breaker box attaching things.

Downside is that we're a decade into net-connected thermostat and HVAC systems and none of them support any of this.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Teardown of a $1.25 LED Lightbulb by joosters on Wednesday February 19, 2020 @04:38PM (#22370366)
Smart meters in themselves don't do anything to save energy. However, they make your energy consumption level more visible, which in turn might encourage you to use less electricity.
[ Parent | on HN ]