Posted on 04/07/2011 8:45:08 AM PDT by Clint Williams
After being directed to create a SmartMeter opt-out proposal by the California Public Utilities Commission early last month, PG&E released a proposal that has angered customers who are frustrated with the high costs of disabling the meters, considering that they never gave their consent for installation.
The opt-out proposal, which was released March 24, allows customers to disable the radios inside their gas or electric meters with the option of either paying a $135 up-front fee followed by a $20 monthly charge or a $270 up-front fee followed by a $14 monthly charge to cover the costs of implementing the program, which involves sending workers to manually read meters. ...
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycal.org ...
unconstitutional
what’s the rationale for people wanting to opt out and have someone come into their home instead? They think it could send more than basic units-used information?
Another poster in a different thread suggested this... how hard would it be to simply install another thermostat that runs your HVAC? Let the utility-provided thermostat go on and merrilly adjust the settings on its own, but don’t have it hooked to your HVAC system.
A system designed by totalitarians. Why do Californians put up with this treatment? They should be chasing the utility and the public service commissioners with pitchforks and torches.
Soft tyranny
Couldn’t this be defeated with a fifty-cent Faraday shield?
Well, the whole thing sounds crazy to me. What a smart meter does is tell the company how much power you used that month, so they don’t have to send a meter reader around to read them all manually—at considerable expense. It certainly is more efficient.
The complaint is not a privacy violation, since it doesn’t tell them anything they couldn’t find out by sending people around to read the meters—except that it’s easier to read the meters often instead of monthly. Big deal.
The complaint is that it’s a medical problem. People with illnesses or pacemakers might be harmed by the wireless signals back to the company.
Well, I’ll let a real scientist answer that one, if real scientists can still be found in California. But I strongly doubt whether there is any real health risk. I think this is just one more instance of liberal insanity.
The power company installed the meters because, once in place, it’s far more efficient. And if you don’t like it, it’s reasonable that they should charge you to have some guy drive over, climb out of the car, and read your meter. Since he’s not going down the street reading meters, but just driving out to read yours, that would be quite costly.
Sorry folks...
Reminds me of Brenda Lee, but sorry is a poor excuse for straight thinking, which isn’t what got CA in the mess it is in.
Tampering with a metered utility is a felony in most states...
That’s why...
I know the folks at the company that is installing these millions of meters. There’s some nut-job(s) in CA making a big stink about the radio emissions/health, etc. As I understand it, the radio modules in this particular case are not that different than wi-fi. Why doesn’t CA get rid of wi-fi, cell phones and other causes of radiation?
The whole point of the new meters was better management of power and eliminating the need to send meter readers (who were bitched at, shot at, attacked by dogs, etc).
There is a whole lot more to smart meters than you have in your comment. If it were only long distance meter reading, the issues would be far less, However it does put people out of work, and the initial expense of changing to new meters isn’t cheap.
My electric company (technically a co-op) went to these a couple of years ago. Seems to be more efficient to me, and I kind of like that it gives them a real-time view of any outages and exactly who’s still affected.
I was under the impression that it communicates right back up their own power lines, though. I’ve never heard of the wireless part. Seems unnecessary, since they’ve already got a readily usable wire connection to every meter.
If it does, someone could just wire it up to an incendiary charge, duct-tape the charge to a Koran, put the whole thing in a steel box in their back yard, with a web-cam pointing at it, and then broadcast the details of their setup on the internet. Each time the thing burns a Koran, you get a new Koran and a new incendiary.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_meter
They want to charge you a higher rate based WHEN you use electricity..not HOW MUCH YOU USE...and remotely load shed (shut your stuff off)...
It's about control...not convenience...
If you wont voluntarily conserve..you'll be “helped” to conserve...
Would a Faraday cage be considered tampering? How about a short-range transmitter broadcasting white noise on the meter's frequency?
Given it's radio, I do wonder how secure it is. I bet in no time there's a hack to actually tamper with the signal to affect the bill.
I had a smart meter once. They cut off my air-conditioner any time it got really hot. The idea was they’d cut it off during peak periods for “up to 15 minutes.” Then, they’d let your air conditioner run; you “won’t know it’s happening.” Well, at 100 degrees and 100% humidity, I timed it; or, started to. But it went off and stayed off. I called the centric company. Somewhere in the fine print it said that they could do whatever they pleased. I had it removed.
There’s a power problem? Build a couple of coal fired power plants. Problem fixed.
You're not tampering with the meter or changing what it reads. Heck, if you do this, you will pay more money for power.
Kind of like my local water company who will sell me a valve that will keep my irrigation water separate from sewage charges. I’ll still be charged a monthly fee for the valve I paid for. Pretty nifty!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.