I am working at the CPUC in the smart meter opt out proceeding and one of the key issues is cost allocation, or who should pay the costs of restoring, or retaining the analog utility meters. Shareholders, socialize the cost, or individuals? Please take this quick 4 question survey. Thanks! Sandi
https://emfsafetynetwork.org/?p=8751
I think that PG&E should pay the full cost of customers that did not opt into the SmartMeter program to refund the $75 fee (if the customer was duped into having a SmartMeter installed), or if the customer never even had a SmartMeter installed.
There are a few reasons not to have a SmartMeter: mainly the unnecessary radio frequency radiation (928 MHz UHF), the elimination of good paying union meter reading jobs, and the threat of time variant pricing.
There is so much false information about SmartMeters that I will try and make this debunking short:
1) SmartMeters are strictly billing devices
2) SmartMeters are transmitting in pulses 24/7 (called a non-liner load) but only transmit a total cumulative reading (not real time data) to the utility once every 4 hours, the utility does not know exactly how much total electricity is being used
every hour , they extrapolate that data from the 4 hour read.
3) SmartMeters and their radio mesh network that they call a SmartGrid have absolutely nothing at all to do with our aging electrical power grid.
4) SmartMeters only are capable of recording and transmitting the total cumulative electricity consumption of an individual meter at 4 hour intervals, and in no way can discern what this total usage is being used for.
5) SmartMeters do not use Wi-Fi, they use 900 MHz UHF FM.
6) SmartMeters do not use microwave radar beams to sweep houses and track and identify individuals's movements.
7) Smartmeters are NOT interactive devices with any device or appliance inside a customers home, they are one way only, transmitting total usage to the utility.
8) There are no Home Area Networks, both Google and Microsoft abandoned the HAN project, and the HAN project ,
never was conceived to communicate with the SmartMeters, it was strictly to be a customer purchased, programmed and installed monitoring system for as the name implies, an in home area, not at all connected with the utility. And the SmartThermostat project is a a pilot project that uses a separate VHF radio frequency and also has nothing at all to do with the SmartMeters
There is a whole lot more to this debunking, but I promised that it would be short.
And, there is a whole lot more to our energy future that really has nothing at all to do with SmartMeters, so if anyone is interested, here is a very informative link: www.solartimes.org
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Posted in reply to the post by Sasu:
Thanks for your post. Just to clarify smart meters do have two antennas- and the HAN can be implemented-it's using 2.4 GHZ- to work with "smart" appliances... and the CPUC is now considering an energy data center to store all the data they are collecting so the govt and third parties can access the data...and they will charge us for that too. Gas smart meters are one way, but electric are two way, plus the HAN. ---Sandi
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Posted in reply to the post by Aldo El Hefe:
The present round of second generation residential SmartMeters that PG&E uses are AMR meters, they are one way only.
The utility (PG&E) has no need to monitor how much each individual appliance uses, they are only concerned with total cumulative usage. You claim that PG&E is going to build new "data centers" that are somehow going to compile all the 100's of millions of appliances and devices that their residential customers use and sell them to third party marketers. That is pure science fiction. There are no new data centers being built for any such thing, the utilities have enough trouble expanding their servers to accommodate the new SmartMeter billing data. Think about it.
There are advanced meters (AMI) meters that are available to commercial and industrial (C&I) customers that have been available for decades, and recently some of them are now capable of transmitting total cumulative usage data to the utility on a radio SmartGrid.
You have to realize that even AMI and demand response meters only transmit total usage to the utility, and some of them have power quality functions concerning the power being fed into the meter from the grid so that the C&I customers can properly correct power quality problems coming from the power grid. The utility is not concerned with anything down line after they deliver the power to the customer(s).
The utility's job is to provide electrical power to their customers and bill for it, and that's it is up to the individual private customers to implement their own private energy management and power condition correction solutions The utility is not responsible for power quality problems (why, I don't know). There are private companies, facilities engineers and manufacturers that have been in business doing just that for decades, it is not the responsibility of the utility to provide those services, the utilities can barely handle what their task is, delivering the power and billing for it.
The pipe dreamed HAN systems were completely separate and privately purchased systems that only were to monitor individual appliances and devices (that would have had to have special chips installed in each device), and never could have reported any individual appliance or device use to the utility. It's all about marketing, and the the marketing surveys done by the manufacturers found out that people are not at all interested in paying thousands of dollars for their own personal HAN system that would show them the same information that is stamped on all rating plates.
There was not enough interest in the HAN systems for the manufactures to pursue and invest in a useless productt, so they scrapped the HANs.
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Posted in reply to the post by Sasu:
PG&E gas smart meters are one way- the electric smart meters meters are two way with HAN capability. The HAN has not been scrapped: Last year the CPUC ordered 5000 HAN systems to be implemented:
https://www.emeter.com/smart-grid-wa...-smart-meters/Real-time data. The smart meters installed by these three utilities all contain a radio that uses theZigBee standard for transmitting data to homes and businesses. This is called the Home Area Network interface. So far this interface has not been turned on. Today’s CPUC decision requires these utilities to file plans that “include an initial phase with a rollout that enables a minimum of 5,000 HAN-enabled devices to be directly connected with smart meters, as envisioned in the decisions approving the deployment of [Advanced Metering Infrastructure] — even if full functionality and rollout to all customers awaits resolution of technology and standard issues.”
You should do your research before you call something "science fiction". the Energy Data center is an issue before the CPUC right now- https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/an-energy-data-center-for-californias-smart-grid
excerpt "...At the same time, the CPUC has been trying to make smart grid data as open and accessible as possible -- primarily to the customers who own the data, but more broadly to as wide a set of third-party software, hardware and service providers as possible, to jumpstart a market for smart grid-to-home energy efficiency.
Last month saw a new proposal from the CPUC for an “Energy Data Center” (PDF) that could help solve the problem. Essentially, authors Audrey Lee and Marzia Zafar propose a central database to hold all the state’s smart grid data, scrubbed or “anonymized” to protect individual privacy, but otherwise open and available to all comers to do with as they wish. The CPUC issued a “scoping ruling” this week (PDF) to set the terms for public comment and involvement in the discussion."
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Posted in reply to the post by Aldo El Hefe:
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Posted in reply to the post by Aldo El Hefe:
Regarding the Energy Data Center: the proposal is that the government can access the data by signing and non disclosure agreement. See previous comment.
The current second generation electric SmartMeters that PG&E is using are AMR meters, they are not advanced AMI meters . The AMR meters do not transmit real time data to the utility, right now the only way that a customer can view real time total electrical consumption is to go and put your face in the meter and watch the display (while getting dosed with RF radiation.
The ratepayers just spent $2.2 billion for these AMR E1 residential electric meters and the gas SmartMeters (also AMR), and while commercial and industrial customers have had AMI meters for many years, the residential customers will have to wait 7 to 10 years before another rate increase will be requested to rollout the third generation AMI SmartMeters for residential customers. That is what you referred to as the technological advances necessary, and that may or may not ever happen at all.
The special pilot test of 500 meters and HAN systems is going to be only for PG&E employees, nobody else will be testing them. These PG&E employees will be given AMI meters for the test, but I have never seen any HAN monitors actually for sale anywhere at all, nor I have I ever seen any of the large appliances fitted with monitoring chips (ZigBee radio transmitters) for sale anywhere. And, keep in mind, the HAN systems are not home automation systems, they only monitor usage, and are not capable of controlling any device or appliance. Even if they ever do start testing the HAN systems, they are not interactive with the utility and will never send any consumption data from individual large appliances to the utility, they are strictly for in home use.
The unused ZigBee transmitters were for the SmartThermostat program. They are sometimes called part of a HAN system, but they are NOT. The ZigBee transmitters were to send one way only commands to a special Smart thermostat, which in turn sends a low voltage (hard wired) command to compressor motors on air conditioning units to cycle them on and off during high temperature events in certain areas. This special thermostat program is strictly voluntary, and PG&E is offering their customers a $25 credit to entice them to sign up for the program. These commands to cycle the compressor motors will be automatically sent to the smart thermostats, but since they are one way only, the utility will have no way of knowing if anyone is actually using the AC or what temperature their thermostat is set at. So, they are not using the ZigBee radio transmitters for the smart thermostat program, instead they are doing a pilot test using separate VHF radio transmitters located on power poles to send one way only commands to the smart thermostats. These VHF systems have nothing at all to do with the SmartMeters, and have been in use in other states for about 15 years, long before SmartMeters
Since all meters only send total cumulative electrical usage of each meter to the utility (and not individual large appliances with monitoring chips), the data center will only contain total cumulative usage of each meter, that's it !
I suppose that some people are worried about a third party finding out how much electricity that their collective meters are using, but this information has been known to the utility for many decades, long before the radio SmartGrid and SmartMeter program was deployed, that is how the utility knows how much your monthly bill is. This consumption data is of no use to marketers, and as far as I know, the law about accessing this data has not been changed, a signed affidavit by court order for a search warrant must be issued, and that would require known defined reasons for probable cause.
This meter consumption data cannot be accessed "willy nilly" as you believe. I think that some people are worried about a whole lot of nothing, basically because they don't really know anything about the technology, but rely on science fiction writers and other pseudo scientists who hold PhDs (Post hole Diggers) and dig fence and sign posts for a living !
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Posted in reply to the post by Sasu:
Where are you getting your information? For example, can you provide a citation for how you know only PG&E employees will get the HAN? PG&E electric smart meters work in a mesh network- relaying data from one house to another- that's not one way AMR metering. I've read the CPUC Decision on the Smart Meter upgrade- these are AMI meters.
What's confusing is you seem so convinced of your information. Are you a utility employee, or hired by a utility or industry to monitor online sites like this? If you don't believe that utility workers monitor the web for this type of info you are wrong. Anyway- if you work for PG&E you could get fired for not revealing your affiliation with the company.
Sasu.
No, I don't work for any utility or corporation, I am El Hefe, that means "the boss in Spanish"
I got my information about the prototype testing of the HAN systems off of the internet. Actually that test of the HAN was announced to be done by 250 to 300 PG&E employees ONLY, and of course some manufacturers. Where did you come up with this number of 5000 to test the HANs ? Did you get from an activist site ? If you did, I understand.
Keep in mind this test was announced before both Microsoft and Google (the big players) announced that they have scrapped the HAN development, but said that they are going to continue to work on developing home automation systems instead, that is what the high end market will buy.
So, this beta testing by PG&E customers of the HAN systems might be delayed even more.
The HAN systems are completely separate from the utilities, and the personal home area monitoring data was never intended to be transmitted to the utilities, but PG&E did use their ratepayers money to do a little misleading promotion that was included in one of their marketing brochures about 2 years ago when selling the SmartMeter project, so PG&E has some investment interest in this "alliance" with the manufacturers.
Now, the government and corporations have to find a new developer of HAN systems, who in turn have to find a manufacturer (in some other country like China, Maylasia, India or Mexico) to get the design and work order for for their 10 cent per hour workers to fabricate these new prototypes. That will be a hard sell, because marketing studies have found that the public is not interested in such systems. It takes millions of dollars of investment capital to design, fabricate and market new untested products, so the HANs have been scrapped for the time being, and only if a wealthy corporation thinks that the HANs might be a worthwhile investment would the concept be pursued, and it may never be at all.
And, how is one way communications of total electricity usage being repeated through other meters not one way ?
And this upgrade to AMI for residential E1 meters is HUGE news, how much more is this going to cost the ratepayers ?
And when is this new third generation of E1 meters going to take place ? I have never heard of such a thing, so can you please elaborate. If it is a PUC decision , then that will be easy for you to refer to a decision that should be available on the CPUC's website (if it is indeed true).
And about you being worried about marketers finding about about what appliances that you purchase, the utilities have now way of knowing (nor do they care) about what a meter uses the electricity that they bill for. If you are worried about anybody finding out about your purchases , the organizations that actually do know what appliances you have are, insurance corporations, warranty corporations, the IRS, and credit card (lending) financial corporations.
The only way to avoid this data being shared is to : only pay with cash, don't register for product warranties, don't put your large appliance purchases on your homeowners or renters insurance policies and this goes without saying, don't try and deduct your purchase on your tax forms !
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Posted in reply to the post by Sasu:
The main "benefits" of Smart Meters is for the utility to eliminate meter reader jobs and to have remote disconnect capability. (CPUC D.09-03-026 ) The fact that remote disconnect is possible and the mesh network proves these are two way- they send and receive.
Utility customers in CA have already been charged 5 billion dollars in rate hikes for smart meters. Smart meters cost $200+ and analogs are under $15 and analogs last likely 2-4X as long. Plus the upgrades that will be needed- for security! Not to mention the fires... I have complied the fire stories on the website www.emfsafetynetwork.org - that isn't fiction.
Smart meters are already malfunctioning and being replaced! And meter readers are still needed in some places due PG&E not getting the data. Thousands of bills are estimated.
RF smart transmitters are being installed in appliances. The 5000 customers to test the HAN was part of a CPUC decision- I posted the link in a previous reply.