Consumers should not have to pay to opt out of having a
smart meter installed, she said. "Let PG&E executives and
shareholders incur the costs of an opt-out program."
PG&E spokesman Greg Snapper said the charges are necessary
so that the utility can cover the cost of sending meter
readers out to the relatively small number of homes spread
over the company's territory that have kept traditional
meters. As of May 8, more than 90 percent of the company's
electricity meters had been upgraded to smart meters, and
more than 27,000 customers, or less than 1 percent, had
declined an upgrade, he said.
A second concern is over the privacy and security of the
data collected by smart meters. Critics say the devices will
be able to tell when a utility customer is using equipment
in the home ranging from power tools to a hot tub.
"It's like a wiretap," said Justine Cook of Dorset, who has
been active in a Vermont group opposed to smart meters. "It
opens up a whole world of information that could be sold or
hacked or used in ways we just don't know."
PG&E's Snapper said his company is not currently tracking
such fine-grained data, but systems that can track
individual appliance use will be deployed in the future on a
voluntary basis.
Allen Gilbert, executive director of the Vermont chapter of
the American Civil Liberties Union, said he wants to see
assurances that police have to get a search warrant before
accessing a utility customer's usage data.
The U.S. Department of Energy's inspector general, Gregory
Friedman, said in a report issued in January that many
companies deploying smart meters had not done enough to
protect the systems from hackers who might be after
customers' personal information or who might be looking to
sabotage utility grids.
"Without a formal risk assessment and associated mitigation
strategy, threats and weaknesses may go unidentified" and
expose utility grids "to an unacceptable level of risk,"
Friedman wrote.
And cost reductions promised when consumers adjust their
usage to low-demand times of day have been slow to
materialize, industry watchers said. Just the opposite has
occurred in Santa Cruz County, officials there said.
The county Board of Supervisors imposed a moratorium on more
smart meter development in January after getting Namkung's
critical health report. Among the reasons aside from health
concerns listed by the board: the meters "have provided
incorrect readings, costing ratepayers untold thousands of
dollars."
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