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HOUSTON -- You may be one of the first people in the country to use a new way to pay for your electricity.

Houston power companies could soon start selling you electricity at different rates, depending on the time of day, and the old meters stuck on the side of your house could be on their way out.

It’s that time of year: summertime in a state with some of the highest costs in the nation for keeping cool.

The monthly bills were a shock to Fabiana Morris, who moved here a couple years ago from Hawaii.

“We’ve been making it a point not to keep our a/c running all the time because of what happened last year,” Fabiana said. Here’s what happened: $200 bills.

The bills came as a shock, because she had no easy way to know how much electricity they’d been using.

Too bad they didn’t live here: This model home is one of 3,000 going up in southern   Montgomery County. The homebuilder is wiring them so that electricity consumption is displayed on a dashboard.

“I would already know what bill is going to look like before I even get it,” consultant Craig Lobel said.

Using too much? Cut back on the air conditioning or dim some lights.

But that’s just the beginning. In Houston, the utility company CenterPoint has plans to put even more advanced meters in a quarter-million homes -- meters that someday could allow the power company to talk to your appliances.

“This is the first of a kind,” CenterPoint Energy spokesman Don Cortez said.

The CenterPoint Technical Center has a mock-up home. In it, they’re testing the new interactive meters. Each meter is the base for an entire electronic network that uses wireless transmitters connected to major appliances.

You could control when the appliances run. For example, you could shut down a refrigerator for a few hours while you’re at work.

What’s more, the interactive meters and your home network would themselves be digitally connected to the utility company.

“This apartment is located on 59 and Buffalo Speedway,” said Dwayne Turner with CenterPoint. The techies at Centerpoint rigged an apartment miles away with one of the interactive meters and, for demonstration purposes, a camera.

With a couple clicks, they can cut power to the entire apartment. Click again, and it’s back on.

Using a different command, they single out an air conditioning unit, turning it on and off.

What’s the point?

“Its not just turning your air conditioner off, it’s turning your air conditioner off with thousands of other air conditioners to make a big difference,” Cortez said.

Turning off thousands of air conditioning units for 15 minutes or so in homes where people have agreed to allow it could avert blackouts on really hot days.

The interactive meters could also open the way for a whole new way to buy power: When demand’s low, like at night, rates would drop.

With the computer controls, appliances like dishwashers or dryers could be set to kick on at night, doing chores cheaper.

Readouts would tell you how much power you’d used. It’s a cool idea in a place where keeping cool costs so much.

Who’s going to pay for all the new meters? You are.  All electricity customers will have to pay about $2 a month extra whether they get a new meter or not. For those who actually do get them, it’ll cost an additional $5 a month.

The project still needs state approval, so it could be many months before any of the meters are installed.