They’re coming to Seattle, and some people are terrified.
James Yamasaki
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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
This thing is a lot less dangerous than your neighbors' mobile phones. And 100,000 times less than your own mobile phone.
@2: There's no reason for this data to traverse the public internet. But laziness and ignorance may put it there.
These provide insufficient return on investment to justify the cost.
Since CityLight has no engineering competence in the field, it is unable to evaluate modifying existing meters for twenty bucks or so to run off a 1 mw Zigbee unit if smart meters were so vital.
Never mentioned is the expansion of the Smart meter network to offer universal 1000 Mbs internet/IPTV/telephone communication channel to ratepayers for less than $2 a month as it would put lucrative city council campaign donations from Big Telecom in jeopardy.
The real money comes from allowing the company to raise lotsa revenue by raising daytime rates a lot and lowering nighttime a little. The idea of keeping your neighbors and household awake at 2 AM doing your laundry will get old real fast. There are no peak shifting cost savings to a hydroelectric utility.
The meters at short intervals generate 1 watt of 900 mhz RF ten times the output of your WIFI or cell phone and may well be located 4 inches from your child's sleeping head on the outside bedroom wall along with 20 other meters if you live in an apartment building. This level is in access of OSHA regulations for telco microwave workers. Kind of like the difference between sitting on the open FUKU core for 5 minutes and living in Denver - same amount of radiation over a year 'cept one will kill ya the other not so much.
Guess what? No zombie apocalypse; no Southern-fried brains (although how could we tell?); no power grid hacks.
The only thing I've noticed is a 3 - 5% savings paid to the utility over a 24 month period. More accurate reading has meant a slight lowering of my power bill--at a time when GP upped residential rates by 8%.
I have worked in the metering industry for over 13 years. I have installed thousands of one way and two way "smart electric meters" in the past 5 years.
One of the main advantages of smart meters is for the consumer to better manage their electric consumption. If we stream more data you can see the periods of time were you use the most power and may be able to reduce usage through your behavior or through home energy devices.
The same could be said for smart water meters. Leaks could be identified quicker instead of waiting two months for the next read to come in and having wasted hundreds of gallons of water per day.
Behavior changes about consumption coupled with smart meters and some home energy devices ( better thermostats, devices that power down hot water tanks, better flappers for toilets that don't leak water) are the solutions to reducing consumption.
It really does work when people try it...
Try reading "Electronic Silent Spring," by Katie Singer.
Read: “NINE REASONS WHY TODAYS SMART METERS SYSTEMS ARE A MISTAKE,”
by Richard H. Conrad, Ph.D. Biochemist: http://www.conradbiologic.com/articles/n…‐reasons‐why‐todays‐smart‐meter‐systems‐are‐a‐mistake.html
Try reading "Electronic Silent Spring," by Kate Singer.
Read: “NINE REASONS WHY TODAYS SMART METERS SYSTEMS ARE A MISTAKE,”
by Richard H. Conrad, Ph.D. Biochemist: "Nine Reasons Why Today’s Smart Meters Systems Are a Mistake":
http://www.conradbiologic.com/articles/n…‐reasons‐why‐todays‐smart‐meter‐systems‐are‐a‐mistake.html
I would take your article more seriously if you employed more independent factual analysis from non-corporate sources and relied less on cheap stereotypical humor and name calling. You cite the American Cancer Society to boost your case. Charity Watch gives ACS a C minus. They are tools of the pharmaceutical industry and devote the vast majority of their research to drug development as opposed to actual research.
You quote City Light PR folks but fail to talk to world renowned researcher, Dr. Henry Lai, Professor Emeritus at UW in the Department of BioEngineering.
Sounds to me like someone got some quiet grant money to write an article from City Light - the same folks who spent tax payer money on an online reputation firm to boost the image of City Light's CEO, Jorge Carrasco.
The government will be able to know EXACTLY every move you make - from turning on your toaster at 3:00 a.m. to switching the TV channel, to turning on your electric toothbrush - because every appliance and electrical device will have a RF (radio-frequency) transmitter device built into it which will talk to your smart meter. Your "smart" home will be bathed in microwave radiation. On the same token, cyber hacking will make it possible for criminals to easily figure out when you aren't home - the equivalent of a large blinking neon sign which says "Rob me".
The Stranger may dismiss the growing number of us who are questioning this greenwash of Mr. Obama's broader green energy plan and boost its clever reputation with its audience of readers hungry for laughs as a dystopian future draws nearer, but you cannot dismiss others who are speaking out about smart meters and the smart grid so easily - among them:
the former head of Microsoft Canada, Frank Clegg: http://smartmeterharm.org/2014/02/07/for…
the former CIA Director, James Woolsey:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIFD1sUT…
the former
To wit, I should be able to get real time monitoring from an app or web page of my dwelling's usage.
Also, I should be able to instantly change my "power mix" to select, for example, more green (solar) purchased electricity at a given price.
I should be able to put caps, and price alerts on purchases of electricity.
I would want it to individually monitor each main circuit in the house and provide charts telling me where most of the electricity is going.
The wifi should be able to communicate not only outbound to the power company, but in bound to intelligent appliances, so my refrigerator could be monitored not only for usage, but connected to total cost of operation based on current electricity rates from the power company.
You know what else emits radiation? YOU DO.
Spread over six years. It's part of SCL's strategic plan so anything managed by the Copper Wire King of 1st Ave S is good, isn't it?
The FCC doesn't regulate non-thermal microwave exposure in humans. It ignores data on human exposure. The EPA will back this up.
Hipster reporting. Jesus.
The fact that so many "environmentally friendly" folks are against these meters is simply disgusting. All I hear from you assholes is that we can solve all of our problems through better efficiency and now that you're being provided the tools to do so you complain again.
Either put up or shut up.
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/…
Plus, as an added bonus, it gives everyone here an opportunity to mock people with health conditions that they are ignorant of, plus ignore the possibility that future research may leave the city as a target for cancer lawsuits. (Remember cigarettes? For how many years did everyone say that they weren't a problem?)
Even better would be if they did the municipal broadband rollout with the meters.
We should convert city light to a PUD as well, so we can get the council to stop skimming cash off it.
I am concerned about City Light completely ignoring the privacy implications of these devices--remotely-accessible data collection units on our homes, operating in a completely opaque manner to those of us upon whom they are foisted.
When I inquired a couple months ago, as City Light were barreling ahead as if implementation of this plan was a foregone conclusion, I learned that not only had they not selected devices (much less had them independently audited for suitability), they had not even established criteria for selection of devices.
The benefits to the utility are significant: detect fraud and minimize outages. They also allow Time Of Use billing which is an advantage in flattening the daily peak in usage. Seattle City Light is carbon neutral, but that doesn't mean it isn't getting coal-fired or nuclear power now and then.
The article also misses that the lyin' spyin' Federal government has instructed local utilities to modernize their infrastructure for the nebulous "Smart Grid" and "Smart Meters" are a part of that process. I prefer the term Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) because prefixing something with the word "smart" is weasely.
However, the risks of being hit by someone in a car distracted by their phone, getting cooked by a damaged microwave, or having one's house flattened by a falling fighter-bomber doing loops over a populated area are all of greater concern to me than unsubstantiated claims of harm from radio waves.
Weighing the risks of intrusive data collection or malicious interference by network crackers is harder, and it's nearly impossible when Seattle City Light hasn't even declared the requirements for these AMI devices.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RP7vmFe…
Goldy wrote a piece about using the AMI rollout to deploy a municipal fiber-optic network in January: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/screw…
Please, scientifically illiterate crazy people, seek help. Take a science class. See a therapist. Stop getting in the way of progress and a more environmentally friendly future.
And that was a medical doctor, not a PhD.
As for claims that people are scientifically illiterate, what about Dr. Henry Lai at the University of Washington? Are you saying that he is scientifically illiterate as well?
http://www.washington.edu/alumni/columns…
http://globalnews.ca/news/1483134/saskpo…
I'd think the nuttiest of folks would be just as happy to not have a utility worker snooping around their property every billing cycle, but you can never really predict how the nuttiest of folks are going to react to something.
Never seen that kind of attitude towards technology anywhere near this publication, website or reader base!
Well, I wasn't around back then, but I see that there are more modern scientific studies that back up those "irrational fears and rumors."
See:
http://archive.wired.com/medtech/health/…
Excerpt: 'Sam Milham, a Seattle-based epidemiologist and a pioneer in electromagnetic-field research, is convinced there are health effects. "Lots of research papers from around the world show increased cancers near transmitters, although TV and FM transmitters are more often implicated."'
The meters, like your mobile, emit at a wavelength that is much larger than visible light, as opposed to ionizating radiation, (x-ray and gamma rays) that is much smaller than visible light.
Ionizing radiation is so small that it can travel between the nucleus and the electrons of an atom. It's called ionizing radiation because it can knock electrons out of their orbits, upsetting the neutral charge of the atom, creating a charged particle that can cause atoms to combine into molecules that could potentially harmful to your body. The most common recombination is H2O molecules, water, reorganizing into H2O2, hydrogen peroxide.
The other thing ionizing radiation can do is damage DNA, by breaking the rungs in the double helix structure, possibly creating genetic mutations.
These meters DO NOT emit ionizing radiation. A geiger counter as pictured would be useless for RF radiation, that has a wavelength that is way to big to affect molecular, or DNA structures.
This is utterly foolish idiocy.
http://smartgridawareness.org/2014/02/07…
Excerpt:
"exposure to RF emissions from a smart meter over the course of a 24-hour period at distances of three (3) and ten (10) feet could easily exceed the exposure received from making a 3-minute cellular phone call"
http://www.seattlemag.com/article/nerd-r…
Excerpt:
"Lai’s frustration with the increasing body of contradictory research led him to do an analysis in 2006 of the available studies on cell phone radiation between 1990 and 2006, and where their funding came from. What he found was that 50 percent of the 326 studies showed a biological effect from radio-frequency radiation and 50 percent did not. But when he filtered the studies into two stacks—those funded by the wireless industry and those funded independently—Lai discovered industry-funded studies were 30 percent likely to find an effect, as opposed to 70 percent of the independent studies."
This anecdotal evidence may very well be true, but it likely not linked directly to these "smart" self-reading meters, but simple to upgrades to more modern digital meters.
Older electromechanical readers (the ones with spinning dials) tend to underreport electricity usage for two reasons:
1) They are not sensitive enough to record very small loads. An house empty at midday with a couple small electronics on standby drawing only a watt or two may not have any power use at all recorded by an electromechanical meter.
2) Electromechanical meters may underreport low power factor loads
Newer solid-state electronic meters, "smart" or not, do not have these issues.
As for everyone freaking out about all this terrible RF radiation... I hope you guys don't use electric blankets, or baseboard heaters, or stereo speakers, or (heaven forbid) a CRT television set!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOabFJle…
I actually have an EMF meter and have tested a lot of things. The biggest source in your house, by far, is any kind of transformer. Even power bricks for small electronics -- your cell phone's charger probably emits more than the phone itself. A big transformer, like for an office building, puts out a massive field. Also, your electrical panel emits a ton, and usually the wiring that leads to it. But guess what? It falls off really rapidly, I believe by the square of distance, so that a few feet away most sources are completely undetectable.
There is one class of individuals who have a legitimate reason to fear EMF: partially-deaf people with hearing aids. EMF can make them buzz or howl irritatingly. Again: move six inches and it goes away.
After multiple house fires in Saskatchewan caused directly by "smart" meters, SaskPower is recalling and removing all 105,000 meters which have been installed throughout the province:
http://www.takebackyourpower.net/news/20…
One wonders how many of them are paid trolls of industry - but I digress. The thread of this conversation has degenerated into petty arguments and ego bashing, a common tactic when there is nothing of substance to actually counter legitimate points of debate.
The original article is extremely biased and reads like a thinly disguised press release from Seattle City Light. Readers with an open mind, interested in digging deeper than the cheap sensationalistic journalism of foregone conclusions found here - you will need to look elsewhere.
http://www.smartawareness.org/ge_is_the_…
Ionizing waves are measured in fractions of nanometers (Take a meter, and divide it by a billion.)so they have the ability to affect a person on a microscopic level. Mobile phone and smart meter RF wavelengths are measured in millimeters and meters. (A meter is slightly longer than a yard) They aren't small enough to knock rungs out of DNA to cause genetic mutations. Explain to me the exact process that you think that smart meter wavelengths, that can be expressed with an everyday tape measure, can affect DNA please.
I think you'll find that most of these concerns are addressed.
You clearly don't understand the scientific process, you clearly don't understand how to evaluate scientific literature and you certainly don't understand basic physics.
Quit spreading your anti-science bullshit.
GE and Sensus both went for UL certification after the incidents of meter base fires at Pepco and Sask. Meter base fires are not uncommon, and have to do more with an overloaded meter base - which is customer property - than the meter itself. The old mechanical meters were war horses who could stand the heat better. The new digital ones, smart and otherwise, are lightweight and made out of plastic. When they overheat, they tend to melt.
The Mount Baker Community Club, 2811 Rainier Dr S on Friday August 15 at 7 pm, by donation. Also at Seattle Town Hall on Saturday September 6 at 6:30 pm, tickets soon available at townhallseattle.org. Call 206-926-9600 for more information on events pertaining to smart meters and the smart grid.
People who are up during the day and asleep at night will pay more for their electricity with time-of-day billing. People on a fixed income, the elderly, the disabled, families with children and home-bound people in general are especially impacted.
Aluminum and steel manufacturers, airplane companies and others will actually have their rates dramatically lowered because they run 24/7, using just as much electricity at night.
Did I mention Microsoft slaves who are at their computers all night? And the poor could all switch to night shifts. Then with their lower electrical bills, their income to expenses ratio would increase. Combine that with the proven effect of microwave radiation to decrease sperm motility and thus fertility, and since everyone would have less children, the poor would save even more money. Heck, they could actually join the wealthy elite who otherwise gain the most from all of this.
See, it's a good thing for Seattle. We love you Anna! Excellent reporting! xoxo
I was involved in the early testing of these things and what they can do is amazing.
But things get really cool with smart breaker panels - look for them to be required in ten years or less. The move to require AFCI breakers was designed (IMHO) to increase the cost of dumb panels, making smart panels cost comparative/effective.
I hadn't heard about smart breakers. Those are really cool! It basically allows for meter-less sub-metering. That is perfect for EV charging.
As for the grid, if we want renewable energy, we need the grid - and it needs to be a smart grid - otherwise the voltage issues will bring the whole thing down. Whether it's solar or coal-powered, it's still electricity.