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Texas 'smart meters' accurate, says study.

The vast majority of smart meters currently installed in Texas are accurately measuring and recording electric usage, according to a report released Friday.

Navigant Consulting, hired in March by state regulators in response to complaints about the accuracy of the meters, tested 5,627 meters in use by CenterPoint Energy, Oncor, and AEP Texas.

The firm found that 99.96 percent of the smart meters tested were accurate. Read the full report at here.

"Success rate of 99.96 of advanced meters is much better than that of traditional meters," said Terry Hadley, a spokesman for the Public Utility Commission.

At a meeting Friday, it was announced that Oncor, CenterPoint Energy and AEP will not request rate recovery from customers for the cost of the report, with an indication that the meter manufacturers will cover some or all of the cost, Hadley said.

Despite the benefits touted by the state and industry officials, some lawmakers had raised concerns about the accuracy of the new meters as consumers complained of higher bills following installation of the new meters.

Houston-based CenterPoint, which has said the meters will allow them to pinpoint outages more quickly, praised the study.

"CenterPoint Energy takes the accuracy of all our meters seriously," Kenny Mercado, senior vice president of Smart Grid Deployment, said in a written statement. "So we are extremely pleased with these results. Consumers in Houston can rest assured that their electric consumption is being accurately measured and transmitted to retail electric providers."

As of June 30, CenterPoint had completed installing more than 450,000 meters and plans to have installed more than 2 million in the Houston area by mid-2012.

Smart meters are called that because they contain technology that wirelessly provides real-time power-use information to electricity distributors and customers. They are also touted as allowing retail providers to tailor rate plans to customers' usage habits.

Pat Hammond, a spokeswoman for Houston-based electric retailer Reliant Energy, said the study affirms the results of a study conducted by the company earlier this year.The company study found that complaints of higher bills were linked to increased usage during colder weather, Hammond said, noting that an electric heater uses five times as much electricity in one hour as it takes to operate your air conditioning system for one hour in the summer.

-- Purva Patel