The mteers and radio systems are not the power grid, but they suck up large amounts of energy from the power grid to transmit gibberish 24 hours a day 7 days a week to keep in sync and chat with each other, and only transmit the customers usage data in a millisecond burst once every 4 hours.The whole program is designed to waste energy, and sell expensive revenue radio collection systems to eliminate the meter reading department.The meter program saves the utilities money by hopefully eliminating the meter readers, but it costs the customers billions and also costs the consumers the energy to power the new radio revenue mteers. The new mteers actually don't save customers any money at all, they add to the total bill.