Uddeboda,
You're right, the vast majority of the meters in Clark county are on an outside wall of the house.

Within the last month, corporate policy changes have disallowed reading of those meters inside homes and they will be forced to move those meters to the outside in order to avoid disconnection. Sadly, most of those meters are in older homes and owned by people ill equipped to afford it.

They are using new meters in Arizona as well, and they are not holding up in the desert heat. Ask any SWG field employee how well their switchover to new meters worked when they did it a couple of years ago. It was filled with problems.

BTW, uddeboa, unless you restrict access to your meter (enclose it or have an aggressive dog where the meter is), your power meter DOES get read every month by a human being. If it's being estimated, that's due to the customer not allowing access by the meter readers. The PUC strictly regulates how often meters can be estimated and it rarely happens for any reason other than access problems.

Part of the reason NV Energy is installing new meters is to get rid of the cost of paying people to read them each month, as well as those connecting and disconnecting power. These jobs will be done remotely instead of out in the field. But the new meters, at least those in use in other areas, are not accurate or fail in the heat. I know a woman who was part of the switch in a neighboring state, and she received a huge bill after the first month. When she complained, her power company told her that's just how it was.

Good luck to all of you in arguing that the great computer in the sky is wrong and you don't really owe that much money.