Patent ID: 8639390

Claim:
A utility commodity rate and usage system, comprising: one or more meters for (i) calculating rate and usage of a respective subscriber utility commodity, (ii) producing one or more commodity usage signals representative of the calculated rate and usage of the respective utility commodity, and (iii) transmitting the one or more commodity usage signals; a control module operably coupled to the one or more meters and configured to (i) receive the transmitted one or more commodity usage signals, (ii) receive utility commodity data from each of the one or more meters related to the respective utility commodity, and (iii) control operation of a subscriber utility commodity consuming device based upon at least one from the group including the received one or more commodity usage signals, the received data, and an device utility usage signal from the device; and one or more remote computers, each being (i) responsive to a respective one of the subscriber utility commodities, (ii) configured to transmit the respective utility commodity data, and (iii) configured to receive at least one of the one or more commodity usage signals.