Just Say No to Big Brother’s Smart Meters by Orlean Koehle


undercharging customers. The companies also say that the smart meters comply with federal safety standards and that the amount of radiation they give off is comparable to what cell phones, microwave ovens and other common household devices emit. As installations continue, a spokesperson for PG&E says the utility is "evaluating options" for customers who say they don't want smart meters. That possibility comes too late for Salada, who complained to the public-utilities commission


but was told that it could find no obvious error in her bill. "We eventually had to move because we couldn't pay the utility bills," she says. "Now I have a $9,000 bill on my credit report." (Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2040176,00.html#ixzz1CgNB9PMi.)


PG&E Finally Admits before a State Senate Committee that the


SmartMeters have Many Problems in Accuracy – Some 43,000! According to an ABC Channel 7 TV news story that appeared on KGO “7 on Your Side,” San Francisco, April 26, 2011, representatives from PG&E appeared before the Senate Select Committee on the Smart Grid, and finally admitted to some major problems with the SmartMeters – in fact, some 43,000 problems. PG&E's senior vice president of customer relations, Helen Burt, at first told the committee, "We have found eight meters out of the 8.5 million meters that we installed where there is an issue with the actual meter accuracy." The Truth Finally Comes Out: Under intense questioning from Sen. Dean Florez, D-Kern


County, it appears there is a very different story. PG&E finally confirmed that more than 43,000 of its SmartMeters have suffered from various problems. For example, 9,000 of its SmartMeters have not communicated energy usage back to PG&E, more than 11,300 SmartMeters simply failed to work and another 23,000 SmartMeters were installed improperly. Florez stated, "This progress report tells me that you have increasing amounts of failure rates in every one of your categories that's going up, whether it's electric meters, whether it's gas meters, you name it," says Florez. After the hearing, Burt told the KGO reporter that the billing of those 43,000 SmartMeters could have been impacted: "The problems sometimes do impact the accuracy of the billing that comes from those meters, but they're not the meter’s accuracy per se.” Moratorium Asked for Against the Meters: Mark Toney, executive director for TURN, The


Utility Reform Network, has been calling for a moratorium on the installation of more SmartMeters until an independent investigation can be completed. He called Monday's testimony by PG&E significant. PG&E is finally admitting for the first time that tens of thousands of its meters are not working properly, are not giving proper readings, and there are bills that they have to estimate and this is a really big problem. Estimated Bills? PG&E said some customers with SmartMeters have received estimated bills


for three months straight because of various issues. However, Burt said the number who received estimated bills was less than customers still using traditional analog meters. PG&E has begun to do side-by-side testing so it can compare the old meters to the new SmartMeters. It also says it will soon leave the old meters installed even after SmartMeters are put in. "In the summer time, we're going to start keeping our customers' traditional meters so should they have a question, we can go back and test it and know that it was their meter," says Burt. The executive director of the California Public Utilities Commission says the commission has now received just under 1,000 consumer complaints about SmartMeters. That is up from 600 reported complaints as of March 15.


Related Content: Story: Local company stands behind SmartMeter accuracy; Story: Texas utilities admit billing errors with SmartMeters; Story: CPUC hires independent firm to review SmartMeters; Story: Delays plague PG&E SmartMeter investigation; Story: Are SmartMeters easy targets for hackers?; Story: PG&E under fire from angry


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