The Vermont Senate isn’t quite sure how “smart” wireless smart meters are.
So it wants the Department of Public Service to study the costs of removing the meters and the meter reading fees for those who choose not to have them.
On Friday, the Senate passed S.214, which would require the department to produce the study by March 1, 2013.
Smart meters, or “S-Meters,” provide detailed information about electricity usage. Utilities tout the benefits of the up-to-date information. The meters allow for faster outage detection, help customers make more informed decisions on when to use electricity, and reduce peak demand for electricity when utilities are buying expensive power from plants that burn fossil fuels.
On the other hand, citizens’ groups say they have concerns about the health effects from radio frequencies the wireless smart meters emit and privacy issues involved with the detailed usage information.
Sen. Bob Hartwell, a Democrat from Bennington, sponsored the bill.
Hartwell said he originally wanted all smart meters to be “hard-wired,” meaning using physical wires rather than radio frequencies to transmit the information.
“My principal concern is privacy,” Hartwell said. “But there is a growing amount of evidence that there is a problem with health as well.”
Central Vermont Public Service Corp. and Green Mountain Power, the state’s largest utilities, have proposed allowing customers to opt out of the smart meter program. Starting in April 2013, customers who opt out would have to pay $10 a month for meter reading.
Hartwell’s bill changed as it made its way through the Senate finance committee. Rather than eliminating the fee altogether, as an amendment by Sens. Philip Baruth and John Campbell would have done, the finance committee’s proposal would require the Department of Public Service to produce a report that itemizes the costs of removing the meters and the costs for utilities to read traditional meters for those who opt out.
Hartwell said he is leery of the wireless smart meters in part because much of the implementation in Vermont is funded through federal stimulus dollars.
“The government is going to be very interested in the information obtained through these things,” he said.
But utilities say customers who opt out will raise costs on a per-read basis, and they should be responsible for covering the bill. CVPS spokesman Steve Costello said people can opt out, but they’ll have to pay.
“Vermont utility law and precedent is very clear that the causers of costs should be responsible for paying the costs,” Costello wrote in an email to VTDigger.org. “For example, a customer who wants a line extended a mile to a new home site has to pay the cost of building that line. Customers who do not take the new standard meter are going to increase costs significantly on a per-read basis, and we believe the state’s long-standing policy has been appropriately applied in this case by the PSB.”
GMP spokesman Robert Dostis said the benefits of smart meters are getting lost in the conversation about health and privacy concerns.
“It’s about moving people away from using energy during peak demand times when it is the most expensive and it is coming from plants that burn fossil fuels,” he said.
Smart meters will allow people to access their hourly electricity usage rather than relying on previous months’ electricity bills to guess usage. The additional information, in theory, can help reduce electricity consumption during “peak” times; usually in Vermont that is summertime.
Vermont Department of Public Service telecommunications director Jim Porter said the agency, which represents the public in proceedings before the Public Service Board, is generally supportive of an opt-out policy.
He said the department asked that a meter reading fee not be assessed until April 2013 when the meters are fully deployed. Once they are out, Porter said, utilities should see how much it costs to read meters for those who opted out and tailor a fee accordingly.
One citizens group, Green Community Action, has proposed that the state require hard-wired, as opposed to wireless, meters.
Vermont Electric Cooperative has already employed thousands of wired smart meters, and Washington Electric Cooperative plans to implement the hard-wired meters also.
Porter said the hard-wired meters work for rural areas.
“As a general proposition, the wired meters are adequate where you have a more sparsely populated area,” he said. “But they can’t carry as much data or at appropriate speeds.”
Avram Patt, general manager at Washington Electric Cooperative, said the utility would not offer a physical opt-out where the utility would refrain from installing the meter, but it would offer a functional opt out where it would install the meter but only read it once every 30 days.
Opt-out or not, the debate over whether wireless smart meters are the right approach hums along.
A position paper by Green Community Action cites independent studies that claim radio frequency emissions from smart meters could have harmful health consequences like infertility and cancer even at doses within Federal Communications Commission guidelines.
The group alleges there is “mounting” epidemiological evidence over health concerns from radio frequency emissions.
In January, the Vermont Department of Health measured radiations from smart meters installed by Green Mountain Power in Colchester and found they were safe.
“The readings from these devices verify that they emit no more than a small fraction of the RFR emitted from a wireless phone, even at very close proximity to the meter, and are well below regulatory limits set by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC),” the report states.
On the privacy side, the ACLU has weighed in in an ongoing Public Service Board docket concerning the meters.
Allen Gilbert, executive director of the ACLU of Vermont, said the group has concerns police will try to access electricity usage data without a warrant.
“We’re not opposed to smart meters,” Gilbert said. “We’re worried about what happens to the data.”
In testimony to the Public Service Board, Gilbert said the ACLU is concerned law enforcement will try to gain access to data that reveals information about a person’s lifestyle or habits. He said the group is concerned police will use secret proceedings, such as inquests, to obtain the data.
