I’m alarmed to read an article from last month about problems emerging in Australia related to the use of so-called ‘smart’ electricity meters.
An explosive investigation into the massive mistakes being made with power bills reveals serious flaws that affect nearly every electricity user.
A whistleblower has told how his his power company offered to pay him off when he uncovered issues with their smart meter billing, sparking calls for a national inquiry.
Australia’s Energy bosses have reason to be concerned, as one man’s discoveries are about to become public knowledge.
Evidence of serious systemic billing errors affecting Australia’s largest power company Origin Energy have come to light – resulting in overcharging and usage mistakes as high as 200 per cent.
. . .
With a Bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering, a Master’s in digital communication, a Doctorate in computer science and a stint as a forensic software analyst, [Dr.] Jayasooriah is the last person a company would want ‘questioning’ their business.
But Origin had little choice, and having suspected his bills were corrupt, Jayasooriah asked the Energy Ombudsman to review them. This is when cracks began to appear for Origin.
On the 16th of April a senior investigator with the Energy Ombudsman’s office emailed Jayasooriah to ‘acknowledge the possibility of error’, confirming the bill was incorrect. However when Origin tried to correct it, they couldn’t.
“They have tried to bill me three times, and they have given me three different figures,” he said.
For the same period he was billed for $460.08, $442.96, and $579 – not knowing if any of the amounts were actually correct.
Nor, it seems, does Origin or the Ombudsman.
. . .
… when Jayasooriah finally got a hold of … consumption data, he uncovered information that may rock the foundations upon which our bills are constructed.
“They have given me something that is impossible to happen from a technical perspective.”
According to his calculations the company is suggesting he used more energy than he was actually supplied.
Origin claim the data comes from distributor Ausgrid. Ausgrid and Origin claim usage data is not fiddled with, and yet every time Origin issue Jayasooriah with a new bill, his usage information changes. In some cases by more than 300 per cent.
David Levy is an associate professor in electronic engineering at Sydney University. He acknowledges these mistakes could affect everyone with interval or smart meters.
“It means that there’s some error in the processing or in the capturing of the data, which applies broadly to all users of such meters,” he said.
“It suggests that there is probably broader implications.”
There’s more at the link.
If problems like that are affecting so many in Australia, what’s the betting that such problems are equally prevalent here in the USA? I understand that already, up to 25% of retail customers have been switched by their power suppliers to the new ‘smart’ meters (whether they liked it or not). I’d be very interested indeed to see an investigation into whether some of them are experiencing similar problems.
Another problem with ‘smart’ meters is that they allow the power company to meddle with the settings of modern appliances in your home. They may not even bother to tell you that they’re doing it! MIT’s Technology Review reports:
If you bought a major appliance in the last three years, odds are it was “smart,” even if you didn’t know it. Meaning: it probably contains a wireless radio that can broadcast and transmit over a small personal area network, sending out information about a device’s status and energy use, as well as receiving commands that alter its behavior.
Many appliances that don’t even announce they have this capability are equipped with it, says Mike Beyerle, an engineer at GE whom I recently interviewed about GE’s coming Nucleus home energy management system.
“We want to build up a base before we make a big deal out of it,” says Beyerle.
It’s an intriguing twist on the old business maxim “under-promise, over-deliver.” In this case, manufacturers aren’t even telling consumers what their devices are capable of because, in part, those abilities are useless without an energy management hub like GE’s Nucleus or a utility company’s smart meter.
. . .
Once a device is hooked up to an energy management system, things get interesting. Did you realize, for example, that your refrigerator’s ice maker’s defrost cycle can be shifted to another time of day by your utility in order to drive down power use during times of peak demand?
Ditto your clothes dryer. If a user is signed up for a “demand response” program in which they agree to have their energy consumption remotely reduced by a utility in exchange for a lower bill, various elements of a dryer can be shut down. For example, it might be set to dry at a lower heat but for longer, allowing the same level of drying but with less energy consumed.
Again, more at the link.
Hmm. I don’t want to receive power bills of dubious accuracy. Still less do I want my power company messing with the settings of my domestic appliances. (What’s the possibility of such fiddling causing ‘brownout‘-type damage to an appliance? I don’t know . . . but I bet the odds are rather less than zero, and I bet twice as much that if they do suffer such damage, the power company will fight tooth and nail to avoid paying for repair or replacement of the appliance[s] concerned!)
I think I’ll avoid ‘smart’ meters as long as I possibly can. They may be great from the power company’s point of view, but they don’t seem nearly so great from my perspective.
Peter
I have one, had no choice. PG&E in No CA put it in. Just came one day and swapped out the meters. I have bought a laundry rack and use it outside & inside depending on the weather. Plan to buy another one. Our bill is below $40 but only because we have no AC. I just found something in the August bill that looks a little weird and am keeping track. People in SF got way over the top electric bills and screamed. I don't think it's fixed yet.
Here in northern New England, people are screaming that the radio waves are going to hurt them
Sigh.
I wish they'd focus on the real issues.
The power company also gives us no choice, though they haven't gotten to us yet.
Some towns have succeeded in delaying them, but nobody I know of has won a final battle to keep old style meters.
A friend of mine put in a smart meter at her house two summers ago. The gizmo began resetting her thermostat to 85 during the day and parts of the house reached 90 F. It literally took a call from the family physician to get the thing removed because power co said "you have to go to [installer power co] and [installer power co] said "well, you have a contract, and just wait a little while until we get the kinks worked out of the system . . ." When an MD called and pointed out that someone might have serious medical complications due to the excessive house temperature, the two companies fell over themselves getting a crew out to remove the offending box.
LittleRed1
I can't think of any law that forbids a home owner from surrounding the meter with a wire cage that blocks the radio signal.
You are not physicaly touching the meter, or blocking access to it by the power company and any attempt by the power company to remove it from "your" property raises several legal questions.
50 years ago our power company missed reading the meter for a few months and used 'estimated' usages on the bills. Then they made an actual reading and billed on that – an amount that represented 'rolling' the meter around, based on the excessive estimates over the preceding periods. Turns out that they could not have delivered the total electricity they were charging for over the 4? month period because it could not fit through our tiny 30 amp mains. It took a while, but they did eventually back down.
"Odds rather less than zero" ???
Bet that you meant "more than zero)
Mike