Date: Sat, 25 Jan 2020 08:16:59 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
From: “C. Bollinger”
Subject: her experience was the opposite of mine
Regarding Ms. Sparma’s post, her experience was the opposite of mine. I called Duke Energy the day we got the postcard, because I had visions of them mangling our connections to our panels as they attempted to install a meter not designed to work with the panels. This was maybe six weeks ago. I may have been the first person to call about this, because they bounced me to several folks, put me on hold several times, then eventually came on the line to tell me everything would be fine — their new meters would work with my solar system. We decided to call the good folks who installed our system. They assured us that the new meters will indeed work seamlessly with the system they installed. So we stopped worrying about it.
Then about a month ago, I came home to find a Duke Energy employee swapping out the meter on our garage, which was built recently and is not tied electrically to our house. The garage now has a smart meter. I asked the polite young man if was also going to install a new meter on the house. He said, “No, ma’am. I’ve never seen anything like that before.” [pointing to our solar panels]. Then he added, “We (Duke Energy) only have five guys in the state who do solar stuff. We’re lucky in this area, because we have two of them. But I don’t know how long it will take for one of them to get here.”
This conversation led me to believe that Duke Energy will eventually send someone to swap out the house meter who is theoretically competent to do so without disrupting our solar system. It also confirmed what I’ve heard about Duke Energy’s “green-washing” practices, wherein they advertise loudly about how solar-friendly they are, but, at least on the home level, they are not supportive.
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2020 20:21:51 +0000 (UTC)
From: Deborah Sparma <>
Subject: Smart Meters and Solar
Hi,I’ve been following the chatlist and the Smart meter information. I called Duke to see if it would apply to me as I have Solar and have “Net Metering”. I was told I WILL NOT get a Smart Meter because of this. If you have Solar, and have net metering – you will probably not get a Smart Meter.
Deb Sparma