Power Up
Our apartment has an electrical meter set aside just for our us. That's no different than you'll find in any New York apartment building, of course, but this one has a feature that makes it something of a throwback.
Ever heard references to meters that operate on coins? We have the modern-day equivalent. In order to keep the lights on and the fridge running, we have to pre-pay for our electricity by buying vouchers at the local supermarket. Then we come home, punch in the long string of numbers on the voucher, and the meter flashes a smiley face and racks up the power units we just purchased. Then, over the next several days or weeks, it slowly winds down again until you put in another voucher or until it reaches zero. At which point the lights shut off.
We're still getting used to it. When we went to Durban for five days, we came home to find the fridge soaking wet and very warm, as the little bugger had eaten up our remaining power and then defrosted itself. Worse, we didn't have any vouchers sitting around, so we had to run out and buy more before we could switch on the lights.
Now, we buy a big voucher for 200 or 300 rand--good for about three or four weeks--and then get a backup for another 50 rand, so when we forget again we at least have some way to switch the lights back on until we have a chance to go get more power.
The meter is over the stove:
And here's a close up:
It does have a few advantages, I suppose. If you don't have a lot of money, you can buy your power in small denominations and then be very careful that the lights aren't on for any longer than you need them. And this system means there's no meter readers, which probably cuts down on costs. But in a country with massive unemployment, you'd think the one thing that the government utility would want to do would be to employ a couple thousand people as meter readers.
Is our system in NYC the anachronism? How is it done in other countries? Is this the wave of the future? Any insight as to how it works in other parts of the world would be welcome.
Ever heard references to meters that operate on coins? We have the modern-day equivalent. In order to keep the lights on and the fridge running, we have to pre-pay for our electricity by buying vouchers at the local supermarket. Then we come home, punch in the long string of numbers on the voucher, and the meter flashes a smiley face and racks up the power units we just purchased. Then, over the next several days or weeks, it slowly winds down again until you put in another voucher or until it reaches zero. At which point the lights shut off.
We're still getting used to it. When we went to Durban for five days, we came home to find the fridge soaking wet and very warm, as the little bugger had eaten up our remaining power and then defrosted itself. Worse, we didn't have any vouchers sitting around, so we had to run out and buy more before we could switch on the lights.
Now, we buy a big voucher for 200 or 300 rand--good for about three or four weeks--and then get a backup for another 50 rand, so when we forget again we at least have some way to switch the lights back on until we have a chance to go get more power.
The meter is over the stove:
And here's a close up:
It does have a few advantages, I suppose. If you don't have a lot of money, you can buy your power in small denominations and then be very careful that the lights aren't on for any longer than you need them. And this system means there's no meter readers, which probably cuts down on costs. But in a country with massive unemployment, you'd think the one thing that the government utility would want to do would be to employ a couple thousand people as meter readers.
Is our system in NYC the anachronism? How is it done in other countries? Is this the wave of the future? Any insight as to how it works in other parts of the world would be welcome.
posted by Erik at 11:35 pm
1 Comments:
The only country in which I have electrical meter experience in Australia, where a top-notch, unionized crew of meter readers work. From what I can tell, there are many similarities between South Africa and Australia, but one major difference seems to be Australia's long tradition of muscular trade unionism. I wonder if that has anything to do with it.
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