Clearly, Jim Duncan's mother raised him to be polite.
During a meeting in which residents of The Villages railed about Sumter Electric Cooperative's plan to install smart meters — they're a plot by the United Nations, you know — the chief executive officer of the electric company never once belittled the concerns.
Admirable.
Or, maybe Duncan was relieved that smart-meter opposition took so bizarre a form. The U.N. wants to monitor and maybe limit the electricity use of retirees in The Villages? Really? Is the boogeyman still under the bed?
Some folks really love drama to the point that they're thrilled to be "threatened," just as people love to be afraid in a scary movie. Never mind those real threats of poverty, homelessness, child abuse and the like.
This type of conspiracy-theorist opposition is easily dismissed, so perhaps it's the best kind. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Don't worry about the meters, dearie, they're not watching you take a bath.
Too bad that questions about smart meters veered into the realm of weird when hundreds of Villagers met last week to hear about the planned high-tech upgrade that can wirelessly transmit electricity-use data, making monthly meter-reader visits obsolete.
The massive retirement community isn't the only place getting smart meters. Across the country, electricity providers are making the switch from analog meters. Leesburg's electricity utility is doing it now, and most Florida Power & Light Co. customers in Central Florida will have the new meters by April.
Why is this? Are they all planning to knuckle under to the insidious agenda of the U.N.?
Not exactly. The answer is simpler: money.
Yes, smart meters will help manage the electricity grid across the country. It will alert grid managers almost instantly to blackouts. Theoretically, it will reduce the number of employees that utility companies need.
But the real truth is that it will allow power providers, including Sumter Electric, to make more money. The way they'll do it is legitimately open to criticism and ought to be questioned by customers.
The expensive part of running an electric utility is being able to provide enough power to cover the "peak" times — those hours of the day when demand for power is highest. For example, in the summer, the time is often between 4 and 7 p.m., when families come home from work, turn up the air conditioning, throw in a load of laundry, switch on the TV, take a shower, fire up a computer and start cooking dinner.
That means an electric utility must build enough generation plants or buy enough energy to cover spikes. If those peaks could be sharply reduced, fewer expensive plants and less expensive power would be needed.
Smart meters will help do that by providing both the carrot and the stick to retrain consumers in how to live, and that's the real personal invasion that ought to be under discussion. Here's how:
Electric utilities, with the help of smart meters, will be able to figure out when you, personally, are using power. That will allow them to charge you a small fortune to use electricity during peak times and reduce rates during more slack hours. That's the stick.
The carrot is that the consumer will be meticulously informed about when these times will occur and when electricity is the cheapest — that will be when demand is the lowest. You can then choose when you want to use it.
The spin from electricity providers is that consumers will have this marvelous opportunity to lower electricity bills by, say, letting the night owl of the family do laundry.
However, people often live in rhythms dictated by work or school hours. If they can't change, they'll pay a premium to keep living the way they do. Or, if they don't want to change — just want to keep on using electricity the way they do now — they'll pony up for that, too.
Electricity utilities say the best reason to switch to smart meters is that it will help them reduce costs. Them? How about us? Will that reduction be passed on to consumers?
Consider this: Sumter Electric had $6.6 million in revenue above expenses in 2011, the latest year for which calculations are available. That figure is what private companies would call "profit." It is the lowest figure since 2007.
Still, the total compensation package for Duncan, the CEO, was $1.5 million in 2011. That is an increase of 280 percent from 2007, the year the nation went into recession.
Perhaps consumers should be demanding that Sumter Electric's board of trustees say specifically where the "saved" cash will go.
Lritchie@tribune.com. Her blog is online at OrlandoSentinel.com/laurenonlake. Lauren invites you to join her on Facebook at facebook.com/laurenonlake.
