Posted by Bob on 3/18/2014 to
"Smart" Meters
Original Source
As stated by Timothy Schoechle, Ph.D. in a document released in late 2012:
“The smart meter is a canard – story or a hoax based on specious and grandiose claims about energy benefits ostensibly derived from the promise of ‘two-way’ communication with the customer. … These energy benefits have not been delivered, or have been only minimally delivered by the meter networks.”
“The meter has come to symbolize a ‘bait-and-switch’ situation, mainly to the benefit the utility industry and its vendors as well as to politicians and bureaucrats. In their present form, smart meters offer few or no benefits to consumers, but pose significant risks and costs to them and to society.”
On January 28, 2014, Timothy Schoechle gave a presentation at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, California discussing the document he authored, “Getting Smarter About the Smart Grid,” as well as providing an update on events that have occurred since the release of the document in 2012.
Some of the notable statements from the presentation are:
“The smart meter … reflects a diversion of resources and push by Federal policy.”
“These meters have a huge, HUGE privacy risk associated with them.”
Characterizing the comments of a senior Department of Energy official, it is stated that:
“We had a huge amount of money that had to be spent on smart grid, and we didn't have anything off-the-shelf that we could call smart grid except these meters that were designed 20 years ago.”
You definitely get the impression that the latest investment in smart meters represents a huge waste of money; these funds were spent because money had to be spent on “something,” and the technology for a truly smart grid was not yet available “off-the-shelf.”
Highlights of Dr. Schoechle's presentation:
- History of the electrical grid
- Explains how public utilities commissions came to be the norm in all US states
- Smart meters have been pushed by federal policy, not by grassroots demand for its features
- Electricity industrial complex
- Renewable energy pushback from utilities who see the writing on the wall for their business model
- Military eschews big power grids, instead prefers microgrids for its bases
- Municipalization of power grid
- Opt-out of the smart meter is not the answer
- Prosumers instead of consumers - encourage the consumer to produce their own power