Price: Free - Installed by Utility.
A Smart Meter is installed by your utility company -- its purpose is to allow communications back to the utility from each location where it is installed. This kind of communication is just one of the elements needed to make our electrical grid "smart" and able to properly manage electricity in a world where renewable energy and other sources of electricity not directly supplied by the electric utility become part of the mix. Smart Meters also hold the promise of communicating with appliances, plug-in electric cars and the like to coordinate electrical supply and demand to optimize power use. This is a long-term thing -- in the short-term Smart Meters can do some useful things, notably, with the cooperation of your utility, send your electrical consumption data somewhere for you to look at. As far as we're aware, the only "somewhere" in wider use now is Google PowerMeter.
Of course the electric utilities have done a superb job of making customers with smart meters installed feel as though they have installed a "big brother" device. Various conspiracy theories suggest that peoples' electrical bills go up when smart meters are installed, that the electric utilities are changing rate structures in a way to charge more for the same service, and so on. It seems entirely plausible to us that these results have occurred. Having watched the electric utilities, however, we can only conclude that any such outcome is more likely due to incompetence on their parts, rather than any intentional malfeasance. Over the last several years, smart meter pilots have generated a lot of controversy, and once could argue that this is to the benefit of the utilities who, given current mandates, have no incentive to join the 21st century. But I digress.
Installing a Smart Meter is simple. Just wait for your utility to do it for you. It shouldn't be more than one week to ten years for most utility customers :-)
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