Submit your own meter readings

HydroOne, my electric utility, offers a secure site where customers can view their account history, make account changes and the like, and submit their meter readings.

Now I've submitted my meter readings before for each utility, but never actually saw them used on an invoice, even in a month when there is no actual read by the utility, and instead only an estimated meter reading. While searching for something else for work, I stumbled across a schedule explaining when a customer needs to submit thier meter reading in order for it to be used on the next invoice.

I'm going to start doing this each month at the appointed time, and see if it actually gets used on a future invoice. According to the secure website, the next actual meter reading for my home is scheduled in October. So there should be a few months where my reading might actually be considered.

Saving Energy At Home

Because of my professional background in mechanical building systems and commercial building energy management, I've had plenty of requests for advice on saving energy where it matters most - in your own home. To date, I've been happy to post snippets of advice, some short and some long, throughout forums scattered over the Internet. So, it's time to start assembling this mass of knowledge in one place, here in this blog that I've christened "Don't Waste Your Energy" after a slogan on a T-shirt that my wife found for my three-year-old son.

My hope is that you'll be able to use the information presented to understand, conserve, and optimize energy use at home. While I don't intend this blog to serve as an end-all, be-all to residential Energy Management, at the very least this may start your own creative juices flowing to put some of your own ideas into action.