Smart meters leave us all smarting

By LOIS HENRY, Californian columnist
Sunday, Sept. 13, 2009

Sure, there might be nothing in the world wrong with PG&E’s “SmartMeters.” But I don’t write fiction, so let’s stick with what’s actually happening.

Hundreds of people in Bakersfield and around the state reported major problems since Pacific Gas & Electric started installing so-called smart meters two years ago. Complaints have spiked as the utility began upgrading local meters with even “smarter” versions.

It’s not just the bills, many of which have jumped 100, 200 — even 400 percent year to year after the install. It’s also problems with the online monitoring function and the meters themselves, which have been blowing out appliances, something I was initially told they absolutely could not do.

Even worse, though, has been PG&E’s response — accuse, deny, obfuscate and shuffle. (That’s somewhat better than the Public Utilities Commission, I suppose, which never got back to me at all!)

According to PG&E, people are just using more power and either don’t know they are or won’t admit it.

Several residents I spoke with said that yes, the smart meters say they’re using more power. But nothing has changed year over year, no pool additions, no extra people living in the house, nothing.

In fact, with bills this high, many, like June Hahn and her husband, are setting the thermostat at 82. And still they’re getting slammed.

Hahn’s bills went from $73.63 in July 2008 to $382.69 this July and $140.93 August 2008 to $735.37 this August. Those are 419 to 421 percent increases!

Rate increases that went into effect in March were 15 percent to 22 percent and applied only to those who use large amounts of power.

PG&E will tell you if usage is up, it’s up and that’s all there is to it, pay the bill, thank you.

Hold up there, hoss.

A man in Choctawhatchee, Florida (no, I’m not making that name up) got the same brand of SmartMeter used by PG&E. He was suspicious enough of it to have a load test done.

He had the power company, CHELCO, do the test. Lo and behold the thing was reporting twice as much power as was actually being used.

Hey, that might explain bills that double for no apparent reason, ya think?

Must be a bad apple, CHELCO said. They replaced it with another SmartMeter and whaddaya know? Same problem. The guy demanded CHELCO give him a written report, which is now posted here: http://www.godlikeproductio... Scroll down to about the 20th post to find the link to the document.

I sent a copy of that report and some questions to California’s PG&E rep on all things SmartMeter, Paul Moreno, but he hadn’t seen the report and said he never got my email.

So I never got an answer as to whether PG&E’s SmartMeters might have the same problems. Or whether PG&E would consider doing a random audit of the meters. Or if perhaps PG&E might set up some way for customers who think this is happening to them to have a similar test done.

No matter. I’ve found that with PG&E, answers tend to vary anyway.

Take the appliance issue, for example.

When I first heard about this in February 2008, I was told no way, uh-uh, can’t happen. It’s not the SmartMeters.

Mind you, SmartMeters are designed to eventually be interactive with our appliances. So we can monitor power usage and say, turn on the dishwasher from our computers at work when demand and cost is low.

Still, I was told, the SmartMeters aren’t set up to do that just yet.

Except Hahn’s ceiling fans blew out because of the SmartMeter and when she called PG&E they fixed them — no questions asked.

I personally have watched the fans in my home go on for no apparent reason.

Moreno eventually told me, that yes, some older model fans (mine are only a year old) didn’t have the necessary “shielding” and were very sensitive to changes in voltage from the SmartMeters.

Why couldn’t I get a straight answer before? It took a while for the manufacturer to divine and own up to the problem, he told me. (Wow, a hat trick of excuses. Impressive.)
SmartMeters really could be quite useful. They’ve been installed in countries all over the world where the focus has been on getting consumers real-time information so they can adjust their power usage according to need and cost.

Here, not so much.

In fact, even the power monitoring facet has problems.

As we reported in May, customers checking their usage online saw that the SmartMeters were reporting usage even during power outages.

PG&E admitted there was a glitch in the system, it wouldn’t affect anyone’s bills and the upgraded meters wouldn’t have that problem.

Nope.

On September 3, one of The Californian’s bloggers (check it out here: http://people.bakersfield.c... was monitoring his usage while on vacation and saw it was at five kilowatts per day until — blip — for no reason at all it jumped to 57 kilowatts per day.

First he was told it was a bad read and would correct itself (which it didn’t). Then he was told the information customers get isn’t accurate anyway.

But again, don’t worry, it won’t affect your bill. HUH?

We’ve paid more than $2 billion so far for these meters. A glitch here and there is expected. But these ongoing problems and PG&E’s stonewalling are unacceptable.

Complaints to the PUC have gone essentially nowhere. One woman I spoke with was told by a PUC rep she should move out of Bakersfield.

No.

What we need is to very firmly demand answers from PG&E, the PUC and our local representatives over and over until we’re heard.

PG&E isn’t the only one with power. It is, however, up to us to flip the switch.

Opinions expressed in this column are those of Lois Henry, not The Bakersfield Californian. Her column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, call her at 395-7373 or e-mail lhenry@bakersfield.com

If you get a power bill that’s just out of whack, do something, ask questions and report problems. Here’s how:

First and foremost, go to TURN’s (The Utility Reform Network) website at http://www.turn.org/ and look at the top right side of the page where it says “FILE A COMPLAINT.” Click there. You can automatically file a complaint with the Public Utilities Commission and TURN will have the complaint on file to follow up for you.

The California Public Utilities Commission
www.cpuc.ca.gov/puc/
To file a complaint with the PUC:
www.cpuc.ca.gov/PUC/forms/Complaints/
The main office is in San Francisco:
505 Van Ness Avenue
SanFrancisco, CA 94102
Tel: 415-703-2782
Fax: 415-703-1758
For their Los Angeles office:
320 West 4th Street, Ste. 500
Los Angeles, CA 90013
Tel: 213-5760-7000
Fax: 213-576-7007

Contact PG&E
24-hour customer service number 800- PGE-5000. People can also log onto pge.com and click on "Contact Us" at the top right of the page which will take them to a form that allows e-mail communication. PG&E also offers customer support lines in languages other than English.
Spanish: http://pge.com/espanol 800-660-6789
Chinese: http://pge.com/chinese 800-893-9555
Vietnamese (800) 298-8438
TDD/TTY (Speech/Hearing-Impaired) 800- 652-4712
Telecommunications Devices for the Deaf and Other Language Services: http://pge.com/myhome/custo...