What Are the Reasons for Smart Meters When Analog Meters Were Safe?

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By Catherine J. Frompovich

The backlash against retrofitting AMI Smart Meters (SMs) on utility companies’ fire- and RF/EMF-safe analog meters for electricity, gas and water customers is growing exponentially across the country. In states where customers are refusing SMs and wind up going to court, some interesting legal repercussions are happening. Here’s what happened in California in late June of 2015:

After a 16-month standoff in California between an electric utility customer, who refused an SM, and the utility company PSREC (Plumas-Sierra Rural Electric Cooperative of Portola), it was revealed that Superior Court Judge Ira Kaufman has a no-cost, self-read analog meter at his home! (What does the Judge know about SMs, and why did he not have an SM on his house?) As a result of those findings during the appeal process, PSREC’s General Manager Bob Marshall agreed to connect the customer’s electricity, drop all past fees, and provide self-read analog service at no charge. 

[Source: Email to CJF citing “Stop Smart Meters Bulletin”.]

Interestingly, a similar situation exists in Pennsylvania where SMs are mandated: An informant sent me ‘their’ personal experience of how ‘they’ were able to procure a photograph, which was emailed to me too, of the analog meter that PA State Representative Robert W Godshall has on his office in Hatfield, Pennsylvania! The ironic part about the Godshall meter is this: Godshall is the Chairman of the PA House Consumer Affairs Committee where SM Opt-out bills are sent, and he refuses to call those bills for a vote. He’s allowed similar Opt-out bills in previous legislative sessions to die because he says he will never call Opt-out bills for a vote. So, why does Godshall not have an SM meter on his office?

Additionally, is Representative Godshall the proverbial liar because of the following statement he made in writing in a letter he sent to me via the US Mail dated March 20, 2015?  In the second paragraph states:

For more than the last 10 years, as I live in PPL territory, I along with 1.4 million PPL customers have lived with an advanced meter and to the best of my knowledge there hasn’t been a single complaint anywhere.

Representative Godshall, maybe you had better check your nose to see if it’s growing longer, since the meter on your office building, according to this photograph of the outside wall of your office taken in late June of 2015, is an RF/EMF-free ANALOG meter — not an AMI Smart Meter!

How dare you deny Pennsylvanians the right to redress by not calling numerous SM Opt-out bills for a vote?

Perhaps, Godshall knows about the Electric Power Research Institute’s (EPRI) report about analog meter safety.

The utility industry report issued by the EPRI “Accuracy of Digital Electricity Meters,” published in 2010, calls the analog meter “an amazing piece of engineering work.” So, why did utilities opt for fire and hazard-prone AMI Smart Meters (SMs)?

That report states, “Refined over a hundred years, the design of a standard residential electricity meter became an im­pressive combination of economy, accuracy, durability, and simplic­ity. Most don’t likely recall their electricity meter ever failing. Such is the reliable legacy of the electromechanical meter.” Whereas, SMs have caught on fire more times in many more places in the USA, as verified by fire department reports, even causing several deaths!

Regarding analog meter safety, the report states, “Although simple and mechanical, the result was like a vault, locking-in and protecting the reading of cumulative consumption and immune to sudden shift or loss of data.”

Furthermore, the analog meter was safe and accurate! The Report indicates that electromechanical meters are “generally immune to standard surge events.” Comparing that established analog meter record with SMs, SMs are prone to hot sockets, explosions and fires, but still the AMI digital SMs are being mandated for all residences and buildings in Pennsylvania! What the analog can’t do is what the SM is designed to do: Perform surveillance on electricity use; smart appliances that are tied in to the Smart Grid; and basically spy on what’s going on within an AMI SM-metered property.

Additionally, according to the Report,

The electronic circuits of solid state meters connect to the AC line to draw operating power and to perform voltage measurement. [….] A range of electronic clamping and filtering com­ponents are used to protect the electronics from these voltage surges, but these components have limitations. The ANSI C12.1 metering standard specifies the magnitude and number of surges that meters must tolerate. [….] In any case, surges that exceed the tested limits, either in quantity or magnitude, could cause meter damage or failure.

Electromechanical meters had no digital circuitry. They utilized spark-gaps to control the location of arc-over and to dissipate the energy of typical voltage events. As a result, they were generally immune to standard surge events. This nature is evidenced in the section of ANSI C12.1 that specifies voltage surge testing, but al­lows that ‘This test may be omitted for electromechanical meters and registers’.

Furthermore, surge events can cause digital meter (SM) failure with possible damage occurring to appliances within the home. Since AMI SMs are smart technology ‘gadgets’ that use computer programs, the Report states, “There is the possibility of imperfections in the embedded software or sensitivities in the electronic circuitry. Hypothetically, such imperfections or sensitivities could result in glitches that could affect the meter reading.” No wonder customers keep complaining their utility bills have skyrocketed by as much as 3 or more times their previous established historical electric consumption usage.

There’s another problem with SMs, according to the Report:

With electromechanical meters, modes of failure tend to be perma­nent. Once a meter or its register fails, due to wear, dust, etc., it is generally still found to be in a failed state when tested later. Software flaws, on the other hand, could create a transient glitch, leaving a meter that checks-out perfectly afterwards. This possibility compli­cates the diagnostic process for solid state meters and may make it difficult to discern the root cause of problems.

Probably that’s the reason why utility companies explain that nothing is wrong with customers’ high bills, even when they check out the SMs, and they do nothing to correct the SM’s erroneous ways of over-reporting to the delight of utility companies’ bottom lines.

The reason utilities give for installing SMs is that they will save money by not having meter readers go out to read analogs every month. Well, there were ‘hybrid meters’ [AMR meters] that, for years, had been reading and sending back utility usage for billing purposes. Customers received monthly bills in the U.S. mail and paid them. The person who prepared this Press Release has had one. So, that meter-reader-person reason is a deliberately fabricated myth. It’s all about surveillance, establishing the Smart Grid, and procuring the federal grant money utilities get to install SMs, since the federal government apparently is in lock-step with the UN’s Agenda 21, of which SMs are an important tool.

SMs track and report back every so many minutes, the status of electrical use in the residence which is sent via microwaves that can be hacked into to access that information. Here’s a chart showing how that works.

City of Naperville Resident’s Electric Power Consumption in 15 Minute Intervals as presented in the lawsuit City of Naperville v. Naperville Smart Meter Awareness (NSMA)

SMs track and report back every so many minutes, the status of electrical use in the residence which is sent via microwaves that can be hacked into to access that information. The chart above shows how that works. It represented a City of Naperville Resident’s Electric Power Consumption in 15 Minute Intervals as presented in the lawsuit City of Naperville v. Naperville Smart Meter Awareness (NSMA). Readers will notice that during the hours the family was away or sleeping, the meter chart showed hardly any activity as compared with power in kilowatt hour readings for when the family members were home and using appliances.

SMs are nothing more than a hacker’s dream that enables identify theft and will facilitate burglaries.

Besides, isn’t it a double standard when judges and legislators exclude themselves from the very statutes they require ordinary citizens to obey?

By law, it’s illegal to place people into a Catch22 situation. Remember that when your utility company starts harassing you, as they really do, about not permitting an RF/EMF-emitting AMI SM to be retrofitted on to your house.

Resource:

PASMA Press Release July 14, 2015
Permission received to reproduce verbatim.

Catherine J Frompovich (website) is a retired natural nutritionist who earned advanced degrees in Nutrition and Holistic Health Sciences, Certification in Orthomolecular Theory and Practice plus Paralegal Studies. Her work has been published in national and airline magazines since the early 1980s. Catherine authored numerous books on health issues along with co-authoring papers and monographs with physicians, nurses, and holistic healthcare professionals. She has been a consumer healthcare researcher 35 years and counting.

Two of Catherine’s more recent books on Amazon.com are Our Chemical Lives And The Hijacking Of Our DNA, A Probe Into What’s Probably Making Us Sick (2009) and Lord, How Can I Make It Through Grieving My Loss, An Inspirational Guide Through the Grieving Process (2008)