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Lois Henry: Something hinky going on with ‘smart meters’

BY LOIS HENRY, Californian staff writer
e-mail: lhenry@bakersfield.com | Friday, Mar 14 2008 5:51 PM

Last Updated: Saturday, Mar 15 2008 10:55 PM

I’d like to give Pacific Gas & Electric Company the benefit of the doubt.

Yeah, right. The stuff I’ve seen PG&E pull on customers puts them in an automatic trust deficit with me.

I’ll never forget reporting the story on a single mom working as a waitress who fingered and helped convict druggies stealing power off her line. She provided all that information to PG&E and they still threatened to cut her off unless she paid for what the thieves stole.

This time around, it’s skyrocketing power bills in Bakersfield. We all expect a bump in summer, but winter?

I’m talking about bills that are double or even triple what they normally are for winter months.

And this isn’t happening to just one or two people. Apparently it’s happened to dozens. Several ladies at a local hair salon have even started a petition that they’re planning to send to the California Public Utilities Commission.

People have compared notes and think the excessive bills started shortly after PG&E installed so-called “smart meters” at their houses.

PG&E got the go-ahead from the commission in 2006 to switch all its customers over and Baketown is ground zero for the new meters. Of the 350,000 PG&E customers now on the smart meters, more than 200,000 are in Bakersfield.

These meters don’t require a PG&E employee to physically look at them and take down your usage. They record your exact usage and time of usage down to the minute and zap it directly in to the billing department.

So far, PG&E and the watchdog organization The Utility Reform Network (TURN) haven’t received widespread complaints about billing problems with the smart meters. (TURN has other issues with them, which I’ll get to.) After three days, Utilities Commission staffers told me they still didn’t know if they’ve had complaints and would get back to me on Monday. My tax dollars at work, huh?

In fact, the only complaining so far has been on KGET Channel 17, which has done two stories and is still getting complaints about wacky bills.

Esthetician Diane Tifft was flummoxed by bills like the one she got in December, double what she typically pays for that month. Though others believe they’re being charged more for the same usage month over month, in Tifft’s case, the bill says her usage doubled for that month.

“It’s hard to argue with because that’s what their machines show, but that’s not what my daily living is showing,” Tifft said.

She works all day and wasn’t home any more than usual that month, she didn’t add any new gadgets and her house was empty for two weeks in December. In the months since, her usage has inexplicably dropped back down. Again, with no change in lifestyle.

“How can that be?” she asked.

She said clients, friends and co-workers are having similar problems and they’re wondering if the smart meters are to blame.

PG&E spokeswoman Cindy Pollard said the company hasn’t received a large number of bill complaints connected to smart meters and in the few they did investigate, increases weren’t caused by meters but by poor usage decisions. She urged customers with problems to contact PG&E directly.

The smart meters have been thoroughly tested and are “incredibly accurate,” she said.

“There is always the possibility that people are using more than they thought and they weren’t being charged for it before.”

Tifft would accept that theory except her usage before and after December was in line with previous years.

“I’m not worried about me. I’ll grumble all the way to the post office, but I can pay my bill,” she said. “What about people on fixed incomes? Or what about when it’s a choice between food and diapers or paying your bill? It’s those people we should be concerned about.”

Smart meters were actually supposed to benefit all consumers.

The idea is if you know exactly how much power you’re using, and when you’re using it, you can tailor your lifestyle to use less or only use appliances in off peak hours.

The pilot program in 2003-2004 showed customers on smart meters did reduce usage by about 13 percent. But only when prices were artificially increased by 500 percent in a control group that was testing “critical peak pricing,” a pricing model that charges more when the system is stressed by demand, such as hot summer afternoons.

“That means you have to hurt people — a lot — before they reduce their use,” said Marcel Hawiger, a staff attorney for TURN, which thinks the smart meters are an unneeded and expensive means toward conservation.

PG&E was allowed by the PUC to spend $1.7 billion on the meters and has recently requested to spend another $623 million because the meters already need an upgrade, he said. That all gets repaid by the ratepayers — us — by the way.

I’m all for new technology, especially if it helps consumers reduce and save.

But something seems amiss with the smart meters, at least in Bakersfield.

The commission should order a diagnostic check of the meter-billing functions here to make sure we’re not experiencing some kind of glitch. And PG&E needs to do a lot more outreach to educate consumers about the new meters.

There could be absolutely nothing wrong with the meters, but given PG&E’s track record with customer service, it’s no wonder people are suspicious.

Lois Henry’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com /home/Blog/noholdsbarred, e-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call her at 395-7373.