Oct. 27--Here's your chance to weigh in: NV Energy says it wants to give you control over how much you pay for your electricity.

"Inconceivable," you snort. "This, from the company that charges me the equivalent of Andorra's gross domestic product for air conditioning in July?"

Believe it, said President and Chief Executive Officer Michael Yackira.

The power utility won $138 million in federal stimulus funds today for a three-year, $298 million project to replace every electric meter in Nevada with a smart meter that executives say will let ratepayers direct energy use year-round, all day and all night.

Some research shows that consumers could pare power bills as much as 50 percent a month with the new technology, though Yackira said the company needs to test those claims in a pilot program and the $160 million that NV Energy must invest in the initiative will likely appear in power rates later.

NV Energy's grant was part of $3.4 billion in government funds given to 100 projects aimed at modernizing the nation's power grid. In addition to smart meters, the grants will pay for automation at utility substations, digital transformers and grid sensors. The grants ranged from $400,000 to $200 million.

In announcing the awards today from Florida, President Barack Obama said a modern grid could give consumers more control over power costs and spur development of renewable energy.

Here's how NV Energy's Advanced Service Delivery program will work:

Current meters give NV Energy general information on power consumption at home. NV Energy collects those usage statistics and sends them to ratepayers as a monthly bill.

Smart meters will reverse the informational flow, allowing NV Energy to send detailed consumption numbers to consumers via a small plug-in display inside the home. Among the figures on tap would be how much your bill is so far in the month, what the cost of power per kilowatt is during one hour and what it will be in the next hour, and perhaps even what you could save if you unplugged energy vampires such as plasma-screen televisions.

The idea? To show consumers real-time energy costs and empower decisions on reducing electric bills. For example, the ratepayer who notices a cheaper cost per kilowatt on the schedule in two hours could wait until then to run the dishwasher.

Maximizing the possibilities of smart metering will require changes to state regulations, which prohibit charging residential customers based on hourly or peak rates and call instead for blended averages. But Yackira said he expects the state Public Utilities Commission to sign on to the hourly-rate modification, partly because the agency sent the federal government a letter supporting the Advanced Service Delivery grant.

The difference in hourly charges could be stark. The cost per kilowatt hour in summer ranges from 3 cents during low demand to 20 cents at peak use.