Smart meters and your usage data

Consumption in intervals through the day rather than one number a month, reported to your delivery utility without anybody visiting your property. That is what makes remote switching, next-day service starts and time-of-use products possible at all.

It also means your billing is based on measured readings rather than estimates in normal operation, which removes a whole category of billing dispute that used to be common.

Texas runs a central portal where a customer can view and download the interval data for their own meter, and authorise a third party to see it. Your retailer's own app or website usually presents a simpler version of the same information.

The practical use is comparison. Twelve months of your own usage tells you which Electricity Facts Label benchmark you should be reading — and if your mild months sit under 1,000 kWh, it tells you a minimum-usage charge would cost you real money.

Your delivery utility, which collects it, and your retailer, which bills from it. Anybody else needs your authorisation, and that authorisation is something you grant deliberately rather than something a comparison site takes.

This site does not ask for it. Nothing here requires an account, a meter number or a login: a ZIP code is enough to show what is available, and the only data anybody needs to see your own history is your own.

Every meter in the competitive Texas market has an ESI ID — an Electric Service Identifier that names the meter itself rather than the address. It appears on your bill and is what a switch request actually points at.

It matters because an address is ambiguous in ways a meter is not. A duplex, a garage apartment, or a unit number recorded slightly differently can produce two candidate meters at one street address, and enrolling against the wrong one switches somebody else's service.

So a retailer confirming your ESI ID during enrolment is doing the careful thing, not the intrusive thing. Having your bill to hand makes it quick.

It does not let a retailer disconnect you arbitrarily, and it does not change the protections in Your Rights as a Customer. Remote disconnection is governed by the same rules that governed a technician doing it by hand.

It also does not measure what you were doing — only how much power the property drew in each interval. The privacy question worth asking is not what the meter knows but who you have authorised to read it.