http://rutlandherald.com/article/20110917/NEWS02/709179953/1004/NEWS03
Health, privacy are concerns at smart-meter hearing
By Peter Hirschfeld
Vermont Press Bureau - Published: September 17, 2011
MONTPELIER — As Vermont’s electric utilities prepare to install “smart meters” on every home and business tied to the grid, some residents are warning regulators of health and privacy issues that may accompany the new technology.
A $70 million grant from the Department of Energy will help pay for putting state-of-the-art meters on exterior house walls across Vermont.
The smart meters, as they’re called, will use wireless technology to beam real-time information about a household’s electricity use directly to the utility.
Utilities say that customers, in turn, will have unprecedented knowledge about how much energy they’re using and when — information they can use to reduce their power use, lower their electricity bills and help the environment.
On Thursday, the public got its first chance to weigh in on the plan. While turnout at the public hearing wasn’t high, tensions were.
“It seems very rash to me to rush into what is essentially a form of environmental pollution,” said citizen Martine Victor.
Like many of the residents at the hearing, Victor, who testified from Bennington via interactive television, is worried about health effects of the “radio-frequency radiation” emitted by the wireless meters.
Allen Gilbert, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, said the smart meters also raise a host of privacy concerns. Personal data about electricity usage — data that will be collected by utilities and stored in a database — “is of great interest to law enforcement, for a variety of reasons.”
Victor, Gilbert and about a dozen other residents sought assurances from the Vermont Public Service Board that rules governing the use of smart meters will protect ratepayers from any potential ill effects.
The three-person Public Service Board has already approved the widespread deployment of smart-meter technology. The Vermont Electric Cooperative has installed about 36,000 smart meters. By the end of 2012, Green Mountain Power and Central Vermont Public Service plan to have smart meters in place for all 280,000 of their residential and commercial customers.
Janet Newton, president of the EMR Policy Institute in Marshfield, said government agencies haven’t adequately researched the potential impacts of radio-frequency radiation emitted by smart meters. Newton, whose organization tries to shape public policies governing “RF” emissions, cited a 2008 paper from the National Academy of Sciences that found that “a number of possibly critical health effects of RF fields remain to be investigated.”
The paper, commissioned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, also suggested that “environmental exposures could be particularly harmful to children because of their vulnerability during periods of development before and after birth.”
Newton said utilities ideally would have opted for hard-wired smart meters that transmit electronic data via cable, instead of the airwaves.
Now that the decision has been made to go wireless, she said, the Public Service Board must at least ensure that residents are allowed to opt out of having smart meters installed on their homes.
CVPS has already crafted an opt-out provision, which was approved recently by the PSB. Customers, however, will be charged $10 a month if they don’t want the smart meter. The utility says the charge is needed to cover the extra costs, like meter reading, involved with having a conventional meter.
Residents Thursday said it’s absurd to make customers pay for refusing the new meter.
The hearing was conducted via Vermont Interactive Television at sites across the state.
“I shouldn’t have to pay for something I don’t want just to protect my own health,” said Dennis Liddy, who testified from Newport.
Gilbert said the PSB needs to impose strict rules that protect customers’ data from unwarranted intrusion by police or corporate interests. Only if they have a warrant, Gilbert said, should police be able to access customer data from the utility. Gilbert said utilities should also be barred from selling or giving customer data to a third party.
James Volz, chairman of the PSB, said the board would consider residents’ concerns as it crafts guidelines governing the use of smart meters.
Vermont consumers to weigh in on ‘smart meters’
http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20110915/NEWS02/709159960
Staff Report - Published: September 15, 2011
MONTPELIER — State officials are asking the public to weigh in on a new technology that could alter the way electricity flows through Vermont homes and businesses.
Electric utilities across Vermont are on the verge of installing “smart meters” in tens of thousands of residential properties. The meters are part of the so-called Smart Grid — a technology, funded in part by federal grants, that will provide customers with real-time information about how much energy they’re using and its cost.
The rapidly evolving technology, however, has raised a number of regulatory questions, according to a staff attorney at the Department of Public Service. On Thursday at 7 p.m., the Public Service Board will host a public hearing at sites across the state to hear Vermonters’ concerns.
The issues to be addressed are customer privacy, cyber security and whether or not utility customers will have to pay penalties to opt out of the smart meter program.
The hearing will be conducted via the Vermont Interactive Television network at sites in Bennington, Brattleboro, Castleton, Johnson, Lyndonville, Middlebury, Montpelier, Newport, Randolph, Rutland, Springfield, St. Albans, White River Junction and Williston. For directions to the site nearest you, go to www.vitlink.org or contact the Public Service Board at 828-2358.
And like sand through an hourglass
ReplyDeleteso ends the United States of America by the death of 1 thousand cuts.
can anybody say Facism....
Who's gonna have there hand down your pants now
?
THEY will tell YOU what you can and can't use..
These HARVEST FARMERS are preventing you from using free electricity.
They make you buy it from them, and now they will have you rationed.
Do you know what triage is? How about triage in a facist environment.
How about facist electrical triage.
Let alone the screw ball breach of privacy that will leave you asking a microphone to please turn your lights back on so you can reach the toilet paper (after they except an electrical voice signature on a second mortgage, oh but don't worry YOU CAN DO THAT FROM THE TOILET TOO).
Darn socialists... Freedom is still alive here.
Your monopoly of power hidden through bonds with the state will end.