Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Felix Kniazev and Olga Julinska. They own a studio and home on a mountaintop in Wells.
Because VELCO is aggressively pursuing building a new telecommunications tower close to our home in Wells, we have been learning about what it can be used for.
VELCO responded to Vermonters for a Clean Environment’s suggestion that it is part of the smart grid, as reported in the Rutland Herald on Jan. 3, by denying the tower is part of the smart grid.
The next day, VELCO told Vermont Public Radio that “maybe” it could be, but so far there isn’t any plan. We have continued to learn about the smart grid and how it is planned to be implemented. Tom Evslin wrote in VTDigger about our situation without much understanding of the facts in the legal case.
Here is what we know. The federal government is investing about $11 billion into this infrastructure. Vermont has received $69 million to date – funds handled by VELCO. This is the 16th largest grant awarded by the Department of Energy and the largest grant awarded to a state. Vermont is in the position to become the first state in the United States to implement a smart grid. Former commissioner of the Department of Public Service, David O’Brien, described it as a “historic opportunity.”
Vermont power companies have put aside $10 million to roll out a public campaign to make the public love the smart grid. There are very few selling points to consumers, mostly the so-called “real time pricing,” which means that electricity will be cheaper at night, so if one has programmable appliances such as washers, etc. they can run them during the night and save some money.
The main problem with the system is that it is going to saturate the entire state in electromagnetic radiation. Not only will your meter now emit radiation, but also your neighbor’s and their neighbor’s. Some homes will host data collectors that will transmit and receive data from hundreds of smart meters.
What the government hopes for is that we all will throw out our “old” appliances and buy new “smart” ones, thus creating a boom in sales, taxes and pollution! We will also be able to check our electricity usage online and supposedly control it from a distance.
You will hear a lot of talk about how “green” this whole approach is because supposedly people en masse will be controlling and saving their electrical usage, therefore reducing overall demand.
All of this implies a change in consumer behavior which has not been proven, and it remains to be seen how much time people will devote to trying to shave a bit off their electrical bills. What about the expense of exchanging all the appliances?
The benefit of the smart grid to power companies is easy to see. First of all, the job of a meter reader will be eliminated. Savings from that alone are very substantial. Vermont Electric Cooperative installed smart meters in a pilot program and the savings resulting from elimination of meter readers paid for the entire program in 3 months.
Additionally, power companies would love to be able to sell more power during the night. Right now if the power is not used up, it gets lost. With the continued build out of industrial wind this will become a real issue, since wind mostly blows at night. The power companies will also have a detailed electrical usage profile of every single one of their customers, which will be very valuable information that can be sold to many different marketing companies.
Lastly, the power companies will be able to control the grid by taking away power from selected areas and redistributing it as they see fit.
The main problem with the system is that it is going to saturate the entire state in electromagnetic radiation. Not only will your meter now emit radiation, but also your neighbor’s and their neighbor’s. Some homes will host data collectors that will transmit and receive data from hundreds of smart meters. Currently there is no way to predict where they will be located. Imagine what a problem this is going to be in densely populated areas! And it’s not just the meter, but soon many of your appliances will also emit radiation because the new appliances such as thermostats and air conditioners will transmit data to the smart meter wirelessly.
We’ll be swimming in this radiation basically everywhere we go and it’s naive to assume that it won’t have any effect on anyone. Waiting 40 years to document the damage, as was done with tobacco use, will be too late for our children. There is going to be so much electromagnetic radiation around that it will absolutely dwarf our current concern with cell phones and towers.
Power companies have ready answers to these concerns, such as comparisons with RF produced by other gadgets and the outdated FCC maximum permissible exposure levels. A smart meter is pulsed, so the real emission during the pulse is much higher, while they’ve taken the average to get that low number. The current FCC standards were set back in 1996 and far higher than in most other countries for the convenience of telecom companies.
The question is, how useful all of this new technology is to the public and is it worth the health hazard risk that may turn out unavoidable once everything is installed? And what about the cost of dealing with the health problems arising from this, cancer, etc.? Who is going to be paying for that? Certainly, it won’t be the power companies.
We would like to know why the federal and state governments are investing so heavily into this development and without offering alternatives. The only choice people will have will be to install their own solar or wind generators and disconnect from the grid, which in the end will certainly do more to reduce pollution and emissions.
The government made the decision without much public participation that we should all be enslaved to the power companies. In light of the real danger coming from electromagnetic radiation, this seems to be a truly greedy and irresponsible decision. People need to look into this issue much more closely and not to wait until the system is installed, and it’s too late to do anything about it.
Time is of the essence. Let’s not let electrosmog into Vermont!