User:Jerry p/You pay electric companies for electricity you produce
You may pay electric companies for electricity you produce as a new product category become available to consumers. This new product category is residential plug in solar systems, where the system is designed to be plugged into a wall outlet. Some consumers will purchase and plug in their panels expecting to lower their electric bills but instead will see an increase. This may be as a result of the electric meter the electric company installed to deter the theft electricity.
How it works
Due the the theft of electricity electric companies may install meters that are incompatiable to plug in electricity production. In these meters electricity provided by the grid is counted as elecricity comsumption. Electricity produced be the solar panel may also be counted as consumption. Whenever solar panel electricity production is greater than the electricity currently being used the metered home excess electricity flows to the grid but the meter counts it as consumption. As a result of this meter operation the bill paying home owner provides electricity to the grid and pays for the privledge of doing so. In honor of the first meter found with this behavior , this mode of operation is called 'non-dented' operation.
Why it is a problem
Most consumers purchasing plugin solar devices do so in order to reduce electric bills and not increase them.
Most consumers are not aware of electric and/or the electric com[panycompany electricity theft dectection and deterance mechanisms
It s not to the benefit of electric companies to disclose their meters non-dented operation to unaware bill payers as it only increasese their profits.
It is not to the benefit of the electric company to pro actively to change non-dented meters as it incurs expenses of time, labor and materials which must be paid by the bill payer and/or the electric company.
Most consumers assume the electrity meter is measuring grid consumerion only and the thought that their own electricity production via the plugin solar panel would also be measure for billing purposes would never occur
Examples
Th. first example of an electric meter operating in non-dented mode was found in the ITRON C1Sr electric meter