A lot of people confuse opting out of a smart meter with buying a privacy shield or a sticker that claims to block the signal. Those products do not stop the meter from transmitting, and the Federal Communications Commission has warned that some of them can interfere with the electric grid. Opting out is different. It means asking your utility to take out the smart meter and put in an old-fashioned analog meter instead. The new meter has no radio, so it sends nothing. The catch is that you have to pay for the privilege.

The federal Energy Information Administration counted just over 147 million smart electric meters in the United States at the end of 2025. That number covers homes and businesses together. If you moved into a house in the last ten years, there is a good chance a smart meter was already attached to the wall. The meter works by recording your electricity use in short intervals and then sending those readings back to the utility over a wireless network. It does not transmit all the time. It fires off short bursts, and how often depends on the utility's own network setup. Published measurements taken near smart meters have shown that the radio-frequency level, once you average the on-and-off pattern, comes in at a small fraction of the FCC's safety limit. And that level drops fast as you walk away. Distance does most of the work.

Still, some people prefer a meter without a radio, and most utilities will honor that request. It is not free. Opt-out programs come with two fees. There is a one-time charge, usually to cover the cost of swapping the meter and updating the records. Then there is a monthly charge that pays for a human being to walk out to your house and read the dial by hand. The amounts vary a lot from one utility to another. A few companies, including the big ones in California, list a lower rate for low-income customers.

The place to find your actual fee is the utility's tariff. That is the legal document filed with the state regulator. It spells out every rate and charge. Your utility might not make the tariff easy to find on its website, but it has to be there somewhere. Look for a page called rates, tariffs, or terms of service. If you call customer service, ask them to point you to the tariff page. Read the relevant section before you agree to anything. The fee you hear over the phone might not match what is on file.

If you have health concerns about radio-frequency exposure, talk to your doctor. If you worry about what the utility does with your usage data, ask the utility or your state regulator. The FCC also publishes information about radio-frequency exposure limits. The decision to opt out is personal, and the cost is real. Knowing what your own utility charges, and where that number is written down, is the first step.

There is a fuller write-up at what opting out costs.