East, West coast metering skirmishes continue
While California utility regulators and legislators continue to weigh the pros and cons of letting electricity customers opt out of smart meters, Maine’s Public Utility Commission (MPUC) has decided to require Central Maine Power (CMP) to give people the option of not having advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) installed at their homes.
It’s a small victory in the ongoing conflict between proponents of smart-grid improvements and a small but noisy contingent of consumers who oppose smart meters for a variety of perceived threats to health, security and privacy.
The Maine plan offers two options to CMP customers who don’t want smart meters: allow a smart meter to be installed with its transmitter turned off for a one-time charge of $20 and a monthly fee of $10.50, or keep the existing analog meter for a one-time charge of $40 and a monthly fee of $12. Customers who qualify for Low Income Heating Assistance (LIHEAP) would be charged only half the cost of either option.
A bill (AB 37) that would impose even harsher limitations on smart metering rollouts is currently in committee in the California legislature. It would require an immediate halt to smart-meter installations until the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) could find a way to offer customers an “equivalent” metering alternative that doesn’t use wireless communications. It would also require utilities to give consumers the chance to opt out of smart metering projects and offer them other metering options.
The CPUC opposes the bill as written, arguing that customers who choose to avoid smart meters should have to bear the cost of that decision. It’s also asking that opt-out decisions be made only on an individual, house-by-house, basis, rather than for whole communities.
California’s Pacific Gas & Electric Company, which has become a frequent target of smart-meter opponents, has already proposed to offer its customers a “radio-off” option for AMI installations. Under the plan, which it’s submitted to the CPUC for review, customers who opt out “would pay reasonable upfront and recurring fees to cover the costs of turning off the radio, manually reading the meters every month, modifying IT systems and providing information to customers on the program through call centers and other channels.”
It’s only fair that customers with smart meters not have to foot the bill for neighbours without. After all, standing opposite people who oppose smart technologies for whatever reason are those who think such decisions are “uncool” … kind of like, in one extreme case, the German technophiles who egged the homes of people who decided to keep their property images off of Google Earth. Not that we’re advocating egging … we just think people who embrace new technologies, especially energy-efficiency-oriented ones, shouldn’t have to subsidise others who’d rather keep doing things in older, more inefficient (and costly) ways.
