Big Brother tried to sneak it past me. It’s a good thing I was home.
My local utility came today to swap out my “unsmart” electric meter for a “smart” one. A utility man rang the doorbell just to inform me of what he was doing at the side of my house.
Disrupting his presumption of consent, I asked the polite man in a yellow utility hat, “Do I have to?”
Somewhat incredulously, he responded, “You don’t want one?”
In response to my friendly glare, he said, “Okay, I’ll put you down as ‘refused’.” He turned and walked away.
No doubt my refusal will be used against me at the Nuremberg-style trials for skeptics, but for today at least, it was easy to tell Big Brother to take an electric hike.
+1
No, that’s the sort of Junk Science this website was created to fight. It’s no more dangerous than your cell phone, or your radio, or your wireless internet connection. Because it’s the same thing.
Smart Meters – something to be afraid of? http://www.squidoo.com/beware-of-smart-meters
i have a mechanical double tarif meter, suits me fine. Half tarif (4.5 eurocents) from 11 pm till 6 am. Makes enough sense, no need to overcomplicate things.
Electrical rates vary by the minute and node based on demand. This can either be very good or very bad. Typical node rates vary from $20/MWh to $1000/MWh, but usually don’t go over $200 (at least in the areas we generate). Whether this is a problem depends on what your utility charges as a fixed residential rate and whether you are willing not to use electricity in the winter between 6A and 10A and 5P-7P and summer from 10A to 10P, which are typically max cost periods.
I’ve got no problem with the utilities charging ToD rates. Whatever meter they need to do it is fine. But nothing more.
Alas, too true. There’s all the difference in the world between my sweetheart remotely adjusting the house temperature and Eric Holdren doing it.
Of course, if my sweetie and I both had remote access to the thermostat, that could go ugly also…
Back in 2000, I worked at a university Engineering School. One of the researcher’s pet projects was developing devices that would control the climate in a home/building. Great idea. My home will monitor it’s own temperature, energy usage, etc. and make adjustments. A small, independent, self-governing system.
Then, I saw it morph into Smart Meters in which a private or public Utility controls your energy usage. Bad idea. A behemoth, captive, autocratic system.
Seems like a metaphor for where the country is headed.
new smartmeters use ethernet over powerline
I had wondered about smart meters interfering with pacemakers unitl I remembered the following: Several years ago our utility installed smart meters to eliminate the need for meter readers (the pit bulls and rottweilers were devastated). It was the first generation of smart meters. We have a communication tower that belongs to the utility company and sends and recieves messages from the meters as well as other communications. The tower is about 200 yards (meters) behind our house on the hill.
After the meter was installed we got a wireless door bell as it was easy to install and caught our fancy. But we could not use it as the signals from the tower were constantly setting it off. A couple of years later my wife had some serious health problems and surgery and they gave us a pager for me to wear when I was outside in the yard. We could not use it either for the same reason, it was constantly going off from the tower signals
While this doesn’t prove anything about pacemakers, it does raise the possibility because those signals do interfere with other devices.
The utility guy mentioned no charge. But I don’t doubt that one is coming.
Watch out, you may now be liable for an extortionate monthly charge for manual meter reading.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/01/24/woman-arrested-while-refusing-smart-meter-installation-on-her-property-tells-us-her-story/
‘To receive a “non-standard” smart meter costs an initial, one-time fee of $68.35 (this is the cost difference between the two meters) and a monthly fee of $24.75 for manual reading of the meter. The Q&A emphasized that no existing analog meters will be retained by customers and that the new non-wireless, non-standard smart meters installed for residents opting out of the program requires new equipment and special training for workers to learn how to read them.’
I make them “smart” myself.
http://www.jibble.org/currentcost/
lucky sod. Over here it’s mandated by law. Refusal means no more juice. On the upside: they are out of funding