PG&E SmartMeters are Crap, According to PG&E [#GreenTech]
This one sentence sums it up:
After months of denying any technical problems with its SmartMeter program, PG&E publicly detailed a range of glitches Monday affecting tens of thousands of the digital meters.
[From PG&E details technical problems with SmartMeters – San Jose Mercury News]
This is the first time that PG&E has publicly acknowledged technical problems with the meters, and I’m wondering why it took 43,376 confirmed problems for them to admit this program has problems. Given the willful obstruction by PG&E in acknowledging the problems with smart meters, it’s outright laughable that PG&E can be trusted with auditing and reporting smart meter reliability testing and problem resolution.
As I wrote last year, the closed system nature of utility smart meters in California risked making them the new e-voting machines when it came to trust and public support. PG&E has accomplished turning that risk into reality.
My own experience with smart meters indicates that something is very wrong… my bills remain significantly higher and comparing monthly consumption to previous year bills (non smart meter enabled) details higher consumption in current periods. The problem is that nothing in our physical house or family patterns has changed. There is simply no reasonable explanation for why my current period consumption is higher than years past so Occam’s Razor would suggest that the meter is wrong, or the old meter was wrong… and if the latter then a reasonable expectation would be that consumers are grandfathered into their old bills rather than absorbing the financial impact of a utility fixing a long standing inaccuracy.
[Editor’s Note: Jeff Nolan cross-posted this to his personal blog. –mrh]
Since you’re here …
… We’d like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.
If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.
