Here in the Bay Area, PG&E is installing the Smart Meter. This will allow the utilities company to read your meter from their home base rather than sending folks out to read the meters.
This will probably eliminate a few dog bites here and there, dogs being one of the more predominant issues to a meter reader. Or so I’ve been told.
But something that folks are noticing… a few folks that is, is that their bill seems to get unusually higher after the meters have been installed.
This is resulting in PG&E having to spend money on an independent 3rd party to test the new meters to see what’s up.
This seems to be the ultimate in ‘Big Brother’ type scenarios. These meters don’t just read your meters, once compliant equipment is installed in homes, these meters can also control your utilities. Specifically, how much energy your utility gear uses.
New appliances are now required to have a radio receiver installed so the meters can control them.
Peachy. Just peachy. I can’t wait for that 110 degree day when PG&E comes along and turns off my A/C to “help me become compliant with their idea of energy use.” In fact, the phrase used is “A home’s smart meter can tell the air conditioning unit to raise the temperature during high power demand periods.”
So much for getting more power stations instead… let’s just control the customer. Grr. In Ontario, CA, installing Smart Meters cost the Energy Board approximately $1 billion in 2005.
There’s some obvious good to the scenario where there are some pretty lazy people that do leave appliances and lights and such on when they don’t need them but I’m not one of them. And yet, it seems, I may become victim to someone else’s whim… while they sit in air conditioned offices.
As I look around the internet, there are some interesting articles out and about.
In one, the title says it all: Buggy Smart Meters open the door to power-grid botnet. The article from June 2009 says that the meters use older, buggy software that can be easily hacked.
Right now I’m not seeing the pros to this for myself, but the first con was getting all the power to my house shut off so they could install this new watch dog piece of equipment.
Cool.
So in the meantime, regardless of what conjecture is out there at the moment, once you have a Smart Meter installed, keep an eye on your bill to make sure everything is working OK.
Here are a few links for you: The Register, CBC,
