Who is benefiting from PG&E's SmartMeters?
Imagine pulling into your regular gas station. Before you stand new, glimmering pumps. However, as you fill up you notice the price on the pump is hidden and you cannot see what kind of fuel you are getting. You are told the new pumps will save you money and promised that the bill you get next month will be lower. When the bill finally arrives, it's two times higher, despite the fact you have traveled less distance in the same car you have always driven.
Most of us would charge into the gas station and demand answers. How much was the fuel? How does the meter work? What was wrong with the old pumps? Then you learn you cannot go to another gas station no matter how mad you are, because every station has turned to this new futuristic meter.
Welcome to the world of PG&E SmartMeters. Wonder why the people of Kern County are angry and want answers? Most have told my office they have lowered their power usage and yet they've seen double- and triple-sized energy bills since the installation of SmartMeters.
When my constituents are angry and confused about their energy costs increasing $300, $600, even $1,500 each month, it is time to bring PG&E and Edison station owners to a public hearing to get consumers the answers they deserve.
Our electric meters are being transformed without our approval from one-way measuring devices to "smart" devices that supposedly communicate information to the utility and consumer about energy consumption in real time.
They're touted as making meter reading more efficient -- saving the utilities millions of dollars because they can now disconnect customers remotely, reducing their labor force because they will no longer need to unlock gates, tie up dogs or make special arrangements to allow meter readers access to tough-to-reach meters. It is clear that these efforts will save the utility companies billions of dollars and make their investors extremely happy.
But what about consumers? To fund SmartMeter installation, PG&E is seeking what they call a slight rate increase. Slight? What PG&E told us would be a dollar-per-month increase for the first five years has proven to be $50 per month more from the start. Truth is, promised customer savings are years away and contingent upon consumers buying additional features the utilities haven't even made operational yet.
Smart Meters should empower consumers by providing them real-time price and usage information to make real-time decisions. They should connect to consumers' "smart" appliances and be based on open-source architecture to adapt to future applications, and it should not cost ratepayers more to upgrade the meters to include Home Area Network capacity so future in-home displays can give us knowledge to help lower our bills.
At some point, SmartMeters should allow us to set energy budget targets and re-adjust energy usage via our cell phones, even turning off appliances for brief spurts when the grid is strained and nobody is home. Wasn't that the point of SmartMeters?
Sadly, the current system offers none of those benefits for consumers. So why the big increase in our monthly bill for SmartMeters? What have we paid for?
PG&E has installed over a half-million meters with the capability of letting consumers go online and read energy data that is already a day old, yet it hasn't yet activated its new Home Area Network system, which will allow people to take that information and put it to work by setting up their own network to control appliances, furnaces, air conditioners and other devices. Why not?
Even if SmartMeters are made to record each meter's usage every hour, how will this enable us to take advantage of electricity prices that vary by season and time of day if the data is not provided to us?
Again, it's like blindly pumping gas into our car and trusting that the price we get will be fair. How will we be motivated to cut back if SmartMeters do not share with consumers the going rate? At least when gas prices are high, we have a choice based on the cost of fuel; the price is posted and the meter tells us how much we've bought. SmartMeters only seem to give PG&E and Edison station owners this knowledge.
That has got to change, and this Monday, in the Kern County Board of Supervisors' chambers at 6:30 p.m., I intend to expose the true intent of the SmartMeters and investigate who is really saving money.
State Sen. Dean Florez of Shafter is the Senate Majority Leader.
