Photo credit: Portland General/Flickr

Sick of watching that little wheel on your electric meter spin around and wondering just how much power you’re using? You might not have to wonder for much longer. By 2015, more than half of U.S. households will have a smart meter, according to a report by the Edison Foundation Institute for Electric Efficiency.

Electric utilities have installed smart meters in nearly one in three U.S. households, or 36 million homes, already, according to the report. That’s up from one in four just eight months ago.

Smart meters give utilities in-depth information about power usage in real time. That lets them pinpoint disruptions and restore service faster, and also helps them work with customers to shift demand away from peak hours. Ultimately, the technology could also help maximize the potential of distributed generation sources—allowing the grid to adjust its use of traditional power based on both real-time usage data and how much wind and solar power was available.

In many cases, utilities using smart meters also let customers pay different rates at different times of day. Some systems give residents and businesses access to a lot of data about when and how they’re using electricity, letting them see directly how much they can save by running a dryer at night instead of at noon. One system for providing user-friendly data, known as Green Button, is already available to 10 million customers.

Not all states are equal when it comes to rolling out smart meters. The report says that by 2015, nearly half the states will have more than half their electrical customers using them. The areas with lower penetration are largely in the center of the country, where power is generally cheaper, but some states in the Northeast, like New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts are behind the curve as well.

So, how much can people save by using smart meters? A report earlier this year by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy found the average savings for residential customers in the U.S. and Europe was a less-than-eye-popping 3.8 percent. But that average came out of a fairly large range—from zero of 19.5 percent. The highest number was found in a Northern Irish program where people prepaid for their electricity and could then monitor how much they were using in real time.

[via Greentech Media]