Smart meter opt-out saga continues
PG&E sends plan to California commission
The notion that residential utility customers in California should be able to opt-out of smart meter programs is back in the hands of the California Public Utility Commission following a proposal on the issue last week from Pacific Gas & Electric.
The California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) had requested an opt-out proposal with "reasonable" costs to Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) customers from the utility during its March 10 meeting and gave PG&E two weeks to respond.
Last Thursday, PG&E offered to turn off the wireless radio in the smart meters of residential customers who choose to opt-out, so their electricity usage data would not be transmitted to the utility's local data collectors. Opponents had alleged that electro-magnetic frequency radiation from those radio frequency transmissions were harmful to their health, despite the fact that multiple federal agencies charged with assessing such impacts have all found them harmless.
PG&E submitted its plan last Thursday as an "application," which means the CPUC will open a "proceeding" with an administrative law judge and one commissioner in charge. That process may include public hearings and workshops to gather further information and public input on PG&E's proposal, prior to a CPUC decision. (Parties to the process can file a protest within 30 days of the March 24 PG&E filing and PG&E has 10 days to respond.)
Thus the saga continues. The CPUC must now determine, among other things, whether the proposed costs to residential customers, detailed below, are "reasonable."
Under PG&E's new offer, customers who opt-out would have to pay several costs. Those costs include turning off the radio in their meter, manual monthly meter reads and a share of the cost of IT system modifications and call centers that would replace the wireless functionality. These fees would also be applied to strengthen the existing smart meter data network, if the radio-disabled meters degraded that network.
The utility's opt-out proposal includes four basic options. Customers can pay a one-time, up-front charge of $135 and a $20 per month additional charge or $135 up-front and an incremental rate increase based on their consumption of electricity and/or natural gas. The other two options include a higher, $270 up-front fee and the subsequent choice of either a $14 per month additional charge or a monthly rate increase slightly below the ones cited in the first two options.
A table on page 6 of PG&E's application presents these options and the applicable rate increases.
According to a PG&E spokesman, customers with low energy use likely are better off selecting the increased rate option, while heavy energy users might limit their costs by selecting the fixed monthly cost rather than the increased rates. At least, that is PG&E's intent in the proposal.
The utility projects that about 146,000 of its customers might opt-out in 2012 and 2013 with such a proposal and it based the opt-out costs accordingly.
PG&E noted that residential customers who simply want their smart meter moved to a different location on their home already have that option, which costs between $2,500 and $4,500 for those with overhead service and between $6,000 and $9,000 for those with underground service.
It remains unclear whether the people who cited EMF exposure to stop smart metering—most of whom live in small towns in Marin County, north of San Francisco—really believe the health issue is real. Some observers have suggested that the EMF issue is being used to "pay back" PG&E for its documented interference in local government initiatives on last fall's ballot that sought public power options as an alternative to continued dependence on PG&E for power and natural gas.
As the issue unfolded last summer, PG&E's CEO Peter Darbee cited my colleague Kate Rowland's column, "Smart Meter Backlash Plays the Health Card," in comments before the CPUC. Rowland's column had cited smart meter safety findings by the Federal Communications Commission, the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements and the private Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. The CPUC in December 2010 concurred and dismissed a petition by the "EMF Safety Network" demanding fresh studies.
Intelligent Utility Daily subsequently followed the saga in a series of columns, including, most recently, "Smart Meter Opt-out?" "Smart Meter Fear Mongering Sets Dangerous Precedent," "Opting Out On Smart Meters?" "Opting Out of Smart Meters: Déjà vu All Over Again?" (a piece on an analogous situation in Maine) and "Wither Smart Meters In California."
Last week's smart meter opt-out news was a new wrinkle on PG&E's role in providing power and natural gas to 15 million people in its service territory in central and northern California. On Thursday, the CPUC put PG&E on notice it could face a $6 million fine for "willful non-compliance" with the CPUC's demand for documents relating to its natural gas pipelines, one of which exploded in San Bruno in September, when eight people were killed and 38 houses were demolished.
Phil Carson
Editor-in-chief
Intelligent Utility Daily
pcarson@energycentral.com
303-228-4757
Comments
Smart meter software updates
Wireless software updates to smart meters might be a good idea.
Placing code in ROM makes updates expensive.
Let's try to investigate how many smart meter vendors have included this feature.
My experiences favor copying embedded controller software from ROM to RAM on power on reset, push button reset, or wireless command reset.
Author of Embedded Controller Forth for the 8051 Family
Good morning
Your points are well taken and PG&E indeed had widespread pushback due to the "Bakersfield Effect," which I think captures your point on outreach, education and "making the sale."
I sense the opt-out provision is different, perhaps. The utility estimated something less than 150,000 people might opt-out, out of more than 10 million customers. I think they're basing that on Marin County alone.
So the big point of "making the sale" remains true. I'm wondering if this particular case that's driving the opt-out option has a different root cause.
Thanks for reading and commenting,
Phil Carson
TOTAL MESS
Seems to me PG&E and CPUC continue to misread the signals being sent from certain ratepayers: they don't want "smart meters" (SM). This points to a failure on the part of SM proponents to "make their case"...assuming there's a genuine case to be made for ratepayer benefits.
On balance, people don't reject things that are shown decidedly to improve their lives. In fairness, it's likewise true that there will always be a few SM holdouts no matter the explicit benefits. That said, given the predictability of ratepayer "push back", PG&E (perhaps with CPUC actually leading) should have pre-installed an opt out plan. Instead, trench warfare has broken out.
Utilities (and their companions at public service/utility commissions) don't get it and probably will never get it. They have had the luxury of making decisions "in behalf" of ratepayers without any need for "buy in" and as such, they remain woefully deficient with respect to retailing. Meanwhile, proponents of "all-things-green-at-any-price" (which most assuredly includes CPUC) tend to favor the "shove it down their throats" approach because "we know what's good for you" (and it's a world easier to do).
I see the problem continuing because utilities will always be able to fall back on monopoly status when retailing efforts are frustrated beyond their patience threshold. In this, PUC's and PSC's are willing accomplices.
To come full circle, the problem of ratepayer "buy-in" could have been gracefully avoided had anyone on the SM proponent side bothered to think the retailing through to conclusion. Then again, the real problem may simply be that SM's just aren't up to the marketing spin. What a mess.