PG&E acknowledges SmartMeter defect
| Tuesday, May 03 2011 07:55 PM
Last Updated Tuesday, May 03 2011 07:56 PM
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. has found a defect that it says caused almost 1,600 of its SmartMeters to overestimate power usage when temperatures inside the remote devices rise to about 100 degrees.
Only 16 of the defective meters were installed in Bakersfield, though 29 local customers were affected because more than one household used some of them, a company representative said Tuesday.
Customers affected by the defect have been notified and will receive an average refund of about $40 and a $25 credit for the inconvenience, spokesman Denny Boyles said.
"We believe we have identified all the meters that have the problem," he said. A company news release said that if any additional meters malfunction, a signal will notify the company to replace them.
PG&E has previously acknowledged other defects with its SmartMeter system, but they generally involved communication problems that sometimes resulted in bill overestimations. This is the first confirmation that some SmartMeters have overestimated power usage in a way that produced inaccurately high bills.
Smart meters are designed to communicate real-time data on customer power usage, with the goal of empowering customers to make wise decisions about their consumption while allowing utilities to streamline power delivery, set up efficient new rate structures, and hold down costs.
The new defect, discovered by PG&E in December and disclosed publicly Monday, appears to have affected only a very small percentage of the San Francisco-based utility's nearly 8 million ratepayers now on SmartMeters.
Local reaction to the glitch was nevertheless magnified by memories of an uproar over spiking Bakersfield power bills in summer 2009. That controversy spread concern across the utility industry, prompted a public apology by PG&E and led to a state-commissioned inquiry that concluded last summer that the devices were measuring electricity accurately.
The Structure Group, the Texas company that conducted that study on behalf of the state Public Utilities Commission, did not return a request for comment Tuesday.
A spokesman for the commission said in an email Tuesday that Structure "did not happen to pick one of these particular meters to test." He added that the commission will review PG&E's technical analysis of the problem and make sure ratepayers don't pay to replace the defective devices.
Boyles said all of the defective, second-generation SmartMeters were manufactured by Landis+Gyr and installed statewide between late 2009 and early 2010 -- after the height of PG&E's Bakersfield crisis.
On Tuesday, San Francisco consumer advocacy organization TURN said PG&E's announcement "should be a wake up call" to the state commission to take customer complaints more seriously.
TURN also criticized Structure's "expensive and useless" $1.4 million study and called on the commission to revisit consumer complaints, "particularly those that came from Bakersfield in the summer of 2009."
Bakersfield Councilman Rudy Salas issued a news release Tuesday referencing a letter he sent Monday inviting the interim chief executive of PG&E to "personally address" the council on what the company is doing to help customers affected by the defect and ensure others are not similarly affected.
Local PG&E customer Liz Keogh, who has publicly questioned the accuracy of the company's SmartMeters, said the utility's acknowledgment of the glitch suggests it has "stepped away from this stonewalling position."
"I think it's good that (PG&E officials) are realizing that they just can't say that everything's fine," she said.
