Getting Familiar With Smart Meters

It only took a few years for the smart phone to become an accessory that most of us cannot live without. Likewise, we expect that once customers get to know their smart meters, they too will rely on them to help save energy and save money.

Smart meters send near real-time electric-use information from our customers’ homes and businesses to PSE&G via a secure communications network.

Recently, the state authorized PSE&G to implement smart meters and the plan is for all of our customers to have them by 2024. In 2021, PSE&G will build the communication network that will support smart meters and we will also install about 80,000 of the devices. Between 2022 and 2024, PSE&G will install hundreds of thousands of smart meters annually.

Smart meters have substantial benefits for customers and are the gateway to creating our Clean Energy Future. Not only will they help the environment by reducing PSE&G’s carbon dioxide emissions, they also make more renewable energy projects and more robust energy efficiency efforts possible.

So what are the two most important things for you to know about this smart technology?

First, smart meters have many benefits. Smart meters:

• Enable automatic, near real-time meter reading and virtually eliminate estimated utility bills.
• Give customers more information about their electric use so they can make more informed energy decisions. 
• Provide near real-time power-outage detection down to the individual customer level and enable more efficient power restoration following major storms.
• Help the environment by reducing PSE&G’s carbon dioxide emissions in the short term and enabling more renewable energy projects and more robust energy efficiency efforts in the long term.
• Eventually allow PSE&G customers to interact with the Energy Cloud.

Second, smart meters are safe. Smart meters:

• Have a long history of safe and beneficial use. The first smart meters were installed in the United States in 2006. Today, approximately 100 million smart meters are in use at more than 70% of homes in the United States alone.
• Utilize low power radio frequency (RF) that is generally far less than devices already in the home that use RF through wireless technology, such as: baby monitors, cell phones, headphones, microwaves, printers, TVs and wireless routers.

Smart meters are the foundation of PSE&G’s effort that will create an integrated, two-way communications network between electric customers and the utility. PSE&G is building this secure, wireless network this year. This digital transformation will help improve service to you, the customer, while helping the environment.