have these claims been substantiated? this doesnt sound like 1984 to me. i want a smart meter, so i dont have to move my kill-a-watt all over the house to determine how much each device is costing me to run. right now we have little idea about what we're paying for.

As for health concerns, who raised them? i highly doubt wireless signals cause any problems, give that between power lines, airports, radio, wifi, landline, mobile phones, etc, there are so many other similar signals in homes.

No need to move your kill-a-watt all over the house. For over 5 years all electric appliances have transmitters installed in them that send that information to the smart meters.

Adam, the issue, as in every political issue, is of freedom vs. force. If *you* "want a smart meter," you can and will certainly have one. But those of us who don't will have them imposed whether we want them or not, by force. The plan is draped in a palatable-sounding veneer of "cost savings" and "efficiency," but ultimately it means that electricity use will no longer be a free economic choice, but a "privilege" dispensed or denied by government. By brute force. It is therefore evil.

Wow.... well said.... you hit it out of the park

FYI: I encourage everyone to read the article "Smart Grid: The Implementation of Technocracy?" here: http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/20613
~ ~ ~ I don't know the intellectual pedigree of its author, Patrick Wood, but it's a good overview. Here too is a video of a talk he gave last September at the Eagle Forum in Santa Rosa: http://vimeo.com/28247826

Greg, this is a technology upgrade. You're not "forced" to use public utilities. You have the freedom to install solar panels, generators, or whetever. If we had private companies competing in the sale of electricity, starting tomorrow, none of them would offer to have someone come to check your meter every month. They would have you install their meter. Mobile phone companies phase out old technology, so you're "forced" to get a new phone.

Michael - most electrical devices dont transmit anything to a smart meter - space heaters, fans, exterior plug in lights, etc. My fridge is more than 5 years old.
Also, if it comes from Canada Free Press, its nonsense conspiracy theory. They thrive on the slippery slope.
This is not the existential issue of our day. It isnt even an issue. The claim of a health issue is invented, and defended with zero backing evidence, by people who feel this is a civil liberty issue.

Adam, true enough - it would be nice to have 100% private utilities. But we don't. Similarly, like every new technology, the Smart Grid is morally neutral - its ethical status is determined by how it's used (I highly recommend Virginia Postrel's book "The Future And Its Enemies" in this context) - so there are certainly clear benefits to it... in an industry from which government is barred and in which there is competition. But the government is the driving force here (pun if you want one.)

"If it comes from Canada Free Press it's nonsense conspiracy theory" - is a poisoning the well ad hominem that has nothing whatever to do with the veracity of the article itself, which I find to be demonstrably factual and sober. Did you even read it?

Adam, if you live in an apartment or condo you have no such "freedom". You are mistaken about apliances not transmitting. Older ones don't but new ones do. And going forward, they all will.

I will be posting information taken from conferences in Europe and what researchers have found.

Greg, Canada Free Press (CFP) is a conspiracy site. That said, I read the article, and even went to some of its link, that proved the opposite point they were trying to make. According to the CFP, there has been a concerted effort since 1932 to control everyone in the world, and the culmination is....the smart meter? Seriously? this isnt about controlling anyones appliances. This is about saving billions of dollars because customers know what they are spending.

from a CFP link to businessweek (abridged to save characters
"introduction of smart meters...greater control over their energy bills...the smart meter informs household members of higher rates, allowing them to alter their habits...Analysts figure that attentive Enel customers have been able to cut their bills by as much as one-half by keeping close tabs on energy prices and usage. Smart meters give customers more control over how much they want to spend."

So a smart meter gives you power to know what you're being charged for, and how much. Ever try to read a published rate table? Its impossible! Would you shop at the supermarket for food for 2 months (LADWP is every 2 months billed), no prices on anything, then you would get a bill, that lumped everything together in one number? And you wouldnt even know what item cost a lot, and what was cheap. You would just have to guess. This is how we buy electricity. I cant wait until that changes.

Not forced to use public utilities? Where do you think we live Adam, Afghanistan? Since the times of your great, great grandmother people in the modern world have used electricity. How is someone who's living in a duplex that doesn't belong to them, barely scraping by on unemployment insurance supposed to just "install solar panels, generators, or whetever"?

The government telling people to put a smart meter on their homes or be deprived of the use of electricity is FORCE. Is that what you call Liberty, free choice or a market driven solution?

By the way, most people are smart enough to figure out what electronics they use more often by observing their own habits. If you require a smart meter to make up for a deficiency in your own powers of observation, you're free to get one installed on your house. Just don't force everyone else to get one if they don't want one.

And if you don't believe that State owned utilities that can moniter your electicity consumption habits are not capable of using that information to control your power usage, you're incredibly naive.

If you believe that people should be forced to do this against their will, you're a troll who should go back to acquainting yourself with the latest Media Matters talking points.

It sounds your solution is to have many companies competing for your electicity business? Private companies would have required a smart meters years ago, because it would save them billions in labor and management costs.
You use "monitor" is in a nefarious way. I use "monitor" is a positive way - the ability to rapidly adjust output to meet the needs of the customers. Internet companies monitor your usage to respond to needs and network problems.

Bottom line is utilities do not care about you, personally, when it comes to electricty use. They care about trends, spikes, outages, and managing the system efficiently. Its a massively complex out of date system. I know in NYC, houses can be without power, and ConEd would never know - when there is an outage, they actually have to drive down blocks to see if an abnormal number of houses dont have lights on.
Would you pay and extra 20 a month service fee instead? 240 a yr. Is that force?

Straw man arguments, nothing more. Sorry bub, no sale.

Is your solution to never upgrade technology, ever? Youve been "forced" to get new mobile phones and new cable boxes. All companies eventually drop support and security patches for old software. Like it or not, utilities, even the private ones, are heavily government managed and regulated. So either figure out a way to change that, or accept that even the natural monopolies have a desire to upgrade their technology to save money and provide better service.

If someone wants to watch a B&W TV, listen to 8 track tapes, play a 33 1/3 rpm phonograph record or pay the cost of their electricity without minute detailing of when & what device used what power that's their business, not government's. The government has no right to know the consumption habits of private Citizens purchasing a commodity from a private company. Government has no rights. People have rights. Government has the privilege to govern with the consent of the governed.

A free market, where companies compete will provide the best solutions to meets the needs of individuals making their own choices. If you want the government to know when you use every electronic device so they can dictate to the power company how much to charge you for usage the government wants to discourage, go ahead. Nobody's stopping you. If I choose to keep an old fasioned meter that shows how much power I used, and pay the rate for how much of their commodity I consumed, that's my choice.

Substitude "the utility" every time you said "the government". Guess what - analog signals are no more, so now you're "forced" to upgrade your TV. Old technology is phased out. Utilities, public and private, charge rates based on many things - season, time of day, type of customer (residential, commericial, manufacturing, etc). Nothing changes with the smart meters except now YOU have access to more info about your usage. And utilities, with better info, can provide better service for less money

With a smart meter, if you want to use a fridge from 1980, feel free. But now you will see how much its costing you, and can make an informed choice to upgrade or not. Previously, its guesswork.
About people being "smart enough" to know their own usage, if you have a 5 or 6 person family in a big house, how on earth could you keep track. Its just like a mobile phone provider giving you 1 bill end of month for 5 phones, with no itemization. You would never stand for that.

Adam, we can assume you won't be joining us in our protest. Why do you feel obliged to try to convince us SmartMeters are OK? No one forces me to get a new phone and I have the ability to turn off any applications I don't want.

A resident in Bakersfield sued PG&E last year which resulted in installation being put on hold because his electricity bill tripled after the SmartMeter was installed. Texas residents reported similiar results.

Thats a valid issue - faulty meters or incompetant installation or buggy systems. but regular meters can have the same issues, although they have been tested over a much longer period of time.

Thats a huge issue i have with government driven project - they often dont do sufficient testing before rollouts. Healthcare bill beings one - zero testing to see the actual results of a bill. Of course, when its not even read, how could it be tested?

Adam, you're talking past my point here, which is: the vast difference between a private industry and a government monopoly (which latter is a redundancy-in-terms.) That difference hinges on the issue of freedom of choice vs. brute force.

Currently we use electricity as customers, with the uncontestable right to purchase and use however much electricity we want, when we want, for as long as we want, within the context of a customer-seller trade on mutually-agreeable terms.

cont'd -

We can look at our power bills and choose to use less or more monthly, depending on what we determine to be an acceptable expense. Since it is in the electric company's interest to sell as much product as possible - like every business - there is an incentive to provide an abundance of that commoodity to meet demand, and in the case of heavy load periods a similar incentive to prevent brownouts and other outages, and to rectify them as fast as possible when they occur.

cont'd -

Within that private context, "Smart" meters and other components would be a nonissue, because no private power company would have any incentive to use consumption data against its own customers - though the data would remain a privacy threat, albeit significantly lesser. The meters would indeed be a demonstrable benefit, in that they would allow for greater efficiency in infrastructure maintenance and troubleshooting.

The presence of government changes that context entirely.

cont'd -

Currently our government at all levels has been overrun by a quasi-religious cult steeped in virulent misanthropy, with a credo that explicitly seeks to engineer, by brute force, the choices of individuals - so as to bring them into accordance with that misanthropic "green" worldview. Its stated goal is to force people - that's: *force* people - to "get by on less," or, to use their infamous mantra, to "reduce, reuse and recycle."

Or else.

cont'd -

Adam, this has nothing to do with an aversion to "upgrading technology, ever," and your focus on that tack is an evasion. When you say "You've been 'forced' to get new mobile phones and new cable boxes" and "All companies eventually drop support and security patches for old software," you're evading, once again, the issue of voluntary choice vs. force.

Mobile phones and cable boxes are provided by a thriving private market, not by a government agency.

cont'd -

Which means that if either suddenly stops providing the service for which the customer pays, the customer can drop that service and switch to a competitor. D'OH, not in the case of cable, because the government imposes and maintains cable monopolies by region, a situation that must be abolished too. None of this is the case with goverment-run "Public" electric utilities, which provide what is perhaps the single most valuable commodity of the modern world aside from food.

Energy is the lifes blood of freedom. What we expect the government to do is make sure we have all the energy we need. We have abundant resources of cheap, reliable energy. The government is shutting down power plants and refusing to allow us to use our own resources. This is NOT in our best interest. Our access to energy should not be restricted.

Adam, since you're apparently severely challenged when it comes to listening to and/or hearing what other people are saying I'll make it really simple for you. You can have a smart meter if you want one. If I doesn't want one, I should not be forced by the government to have it. Capice? Or is that too simple for your brilliant mind?

personal attacks not necessary. bottom line is i view smart meters as utilities implementing a technological upgrade. you view it as the government putting eyes/ears in your home so they can monitor what you do for nefarious purposes, to control you through electricity rationing. We have trillions of debt, greater dependancy society, every growing centralized govt, union power, illegal immig, failing schools, and this tea party group wants to rally around electricty meters?

Yes.

For all of the reasons outlined above. Have we become so complacent in our liberties, have we taken electricity so thoroughly for granted, that we can blithely acquiesce to a significant, tangible threat of its being transformed from a free economic choice into a government "privilege"? And I agree, personal attacks are never persuasive arguments and have no place in rational debate.

im glad we can have this discussion. for perspective, i'm completely against proposals to install GPS devices in cars to tax by the mile driven. it adds ZERO value to the driver (whereas smart meter adds value to the user and power company managing/reducing costs, even with concerns for misuse of data). GPS devices in cars are solely there to tax us, and impose usage tiers, which restrict freedom of movement. If there is a *credible* threat of those, ill be the first to protest.