Guess what? This is the old style meter as well…….. I’ve also heard where my friends were charged even more money after switching to a smart meter and none of their habits changed just having the new meter installed.

Its a smart meter for the power companies… They are laughing all the way to the bank. The other commenters are dead on.

Some of us close to the “smart” meter issue are concerned the ACC may soon decide on “smart” meter policy. And that policy reads like it was written by the monopoly utilities themselves. So now is the time to get your comments in to the ACC.

The Commissioners’ email addresses are below in the “To:” heading. To get your comments posted to their “smart” meter docket, Cc mailmaster@azcc.gov and be sure to reference docket # E-00000C-11-0328 as I have below.

Borrow freely from my letter or just tell them NO “smart” meters!

And if you have not already, be sure to tell your electric company you do not consent to a “smart” meter installation. Remaining silent means you have given the company your “implied consent”.

Let others know by forwarding this email.

Smart People Oppose “Smart” Meters

— On Tue, 1/22/13, Warren Woodward wrote:

From: Warren Woodward
Subject: AZ Corp. Comm. – Corrupt or Incompetent?, Pt. II
To: Stump-web@azcc.gov, RBurns-web@azcc.gov, Burns-web@azcc.gov, Pierce-web@azcc.gov, BitterSmith-web@azcc.gov
Cc: jjerich@azruco.gov, cfraulob@azruco.gov, consumerinfo@azag.gov, bbarton@azleg.gov
Date: Tuesday, January 22, 2013, 7:02 PM

Warren Woodward

55 Ross Circle

Sedona, Arizona 86336

928 204 6434

January 18, 2013

Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC)

1200 West Washington Street

Phoenix, Arizona 85007

Re: Docket # E-00000C-11-0328

Commissioners,

In a previous letter, responding to your staff’s proposed “smart” meter guidelines, I speculated that the guidelines were so ridiculously out of touch with ratepayers, so skewed to the greed driven agenda of the monopoly utilities, that the ACC must either be corrupt or incompetent. Some new developments have caused me to wonder the same thing.

According to The Energy Policy Act of 2005, Section 1252, “smart meters”, electric utilities shall provide such meters to those customers who request them. Therefore, people should have to “opt in” to “smart” meters. People who do not want them should not have to “opt out”. (Energy Policy Act is here: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-109publ58/html/PLAW-109publ58.htm )

Additionally, the ACC’s own 2007 decision on the subject echoes the voluntary nature of the program. That 2007 decision also states that the ACC is “required“ to consider
• conservation of energy supplied by electric utilities,

• optimal efficiency of electric utility facilities and resources, and

• equitable rates for electric consumers

Two highly biased workshop meetings in a year and a half are not my idea of ‘consideration’, especially when the first meeting was basically a propaganda exercise for the utilities. They got as much time as they wanted and the public’s three-minute-apiece voice was the only independent one in the room.

The second meeting was slightly better in that we got more than 3 measly minutes, but the public’s was still the only independent voice in the room. And all the commissioners except Pierce either left early or were absent altogether so that we were essentially talking to empty chairs for a large portion of the meeting.

Meanwhile, APS’s aggressive behavior and their “smart” meter installation binge demonstrates that this intended voluntary program has morphed into a mandatory program – without ACC oversight and without the ACC honoring the requirements they themselves decided upon!

Indeed, APS is touting the fact that they have almost completed installing “smart” meters. This installation has been over customer objections, without permitting customers to keep their analog meters, and also to people who know nothing about health and privacy issues, who find out later and then have to fight to get their “smart” meter removed. Topping it all off, the ACC staff appears to be doing APS’ bidding by recently proposing charging ratepayers an extortion fee to keep their mechanical analog meters. So again, this raises the question, is the ACC incompetent or corrupt?

Let’s look at those three requirements the ACC decided upon but has failed to consider since adopting them six years ago.

We have been told repeatedly that we need “smart” meters and a “smart” grid for the sake of “energy efficiency”. We have been told to conserve. We have been guilt tripped about it.

Yet just recently, APS customers received a bill insert informing them that because everyone has done such a good job at conserving that our rates are going up! Worse, we are told the rate increase was approved by you!

What kind of sick joke is this?

And I am sure many people are conserving simply because times are tough. They cannot afford to waste money and so are cutting back any and every way they can. Now these very same people are being punished with a rate increase? It’s not just a sick joke; it’s a disgrace, especially when the APS CEO is making $5.66 million a year. Again, the ACC must be incompetent or corrupt to allow this to happen.

Use less and pay more. Use more and pay more. Heads APS wins and tails we lose.

Which brings me to the fraud of so-called “smart” meters.

We have been told repeatedly how they are going to save us all energy. So if that actually happens then APS will get another rate increase?

It reminds me of one of your meetings in which APS was called out for charging people with “smart” meters a meter reading fee. APS said they still had “infrastructure” costs. Again, heads APS wins and tails we lose. APS wants – and gets it – both ways thanks to their good buddies at the ACC.

I found out recently that APS gets to make a guaranteed 8 to 10 percent return on capital improvements, something “smart” meters are mistakenly considered. With interest rates at close to zero, who wouldn’t jump at an easy 8 to 10 percent return? No wonder APS has been on a “smart” meter installation binge. The whole thing is a scam and the ACC appears complicit in it from where I sit.

You had scheduled another “smart” meter meeting for January 22nd (now postponed) entitled “Societal Cost Test & Energy Efficiency Cost Effectiveness”.

Don’t bother to reschedule. The test has already been done and the results are in. Meters do not save electricity. People do.

Enclosed you will find the brief of the Connecticut Attorney General which he filed before Connecticut’s ACC equivalent. His brief is based on a pilot study of “smart” meters which involved thousands of real people with real “smart” meters – as opposed to the wishful fantasy computer projections of agenda driven “scientists” with power point presentations. ( Brief is here: http://www.w4ar.com/ATTY_GENERAL_CONN_05-10-03RE04_Brief.pdf )

His analysis of Connecticut’s pilot study considers all three of your stated requirements in depth. “Smart” meters fail all three by a large measure.

In short, he found that in the real world ratepayers would be on the hook for many multi-millions of dollars to gain maybe a few pennies, maybe. He found millions in “stranded costs”. And he also found that the program was discriminatory and punitive to certain customers.

Excerpts from the report:

• …the costs associated with the full deployment of AMI [“smart”] meters are huge and cannot be justified by energy savings achieved.

• Many customers do not want or cannot use the new AMI meters. Under the Company’s plan, however, these customers will nonetheless be forced to subsidize the cost of the meters for the few customers who will use them.

• Certain types of customers, due to no fault of their own, simply cannot shift their electricity usage to off peak times. These customers include many elderly, those with sick or young children at home, as well as those customers who work second or third shifts. Also, many businesses simply cannot change the times that they use electricity. Forcing these customers to purchase AMI meters is punitive. First, these customers cannot take advantage of the time-based rates that the AMI meters are intended to facilitate. Second, these customers will not only be forced to pay for their own meters, but they will also be required to subsidize any savings achieved by those customers that can benefit from time-of-use rates. Third, even if they could shift the times of their electric usage, many of these customers cannot afford the associated controlling technologies that are required to make the AMI meters truly effective. While time-based rates should remain an option for electric customers, they should not be forced on customers to their economic detriment.

The only flaw I can find with the study is that it does not take into consideration the cost of ill health and dangers such as ruined appliances and house-fires, the cost of medical care and disability payments for those who are harmed, or the cost of the inevitable lawsuits for same, as well as lawsuits for privacy and property violations. Yet even without considering all those additional costs, “smart” meters still demonstrated no benefit in the Attorney General’s report.

I have brought this report to your attention previously. Myself and others have sent you a link to the Connecticut Attorney General’s press release. I am willing to bet major money that not one of you or your staff took the time to actually seek this brief out, read it, and learn from it.

Will you read it this time? Arizonans are paying you $79.5K a year (+bennies) to do your homework on this issue. It has been clear from the get-go by you and your staff’s repeatedly demonstrated lack of knowledge about “smart” meters that you have not done your homework, that you have read little, if anything, of the information myself and others have sent you over the past year and a half. Indeed, at your first meeting a year and a half ago I called all of you out for not doing your homework. What a shame, what a disgrace that nothing has changed since then.

Two more reasons to scrap your “Societal Cost Test & Energy Efficiency Cost Effectiveness” meeting entirely are the two people you chose to present it. Schiller and Hoffman are both on the federal government payroll, one as a direct employee, the other as a contractor (who was a former employee).

All you will get from them is some U.S. Dept. of Energy (USDOE) power point propaganda that “smart” meters are great and the “smart” grid is wonderful. As I have said before, if you are going to get experts they need to be independent experts, not corporate, tobacco company-style “scientists” like the one at your first meeting, or government shills like these two. Hoffman and Schiller both get their bread buttered by the same USDOE that subsidized “smart” meters to the tune of $3.5 billion dollars nationwide. Anything Hoffman and Schiller have to say will be biased in favor of USDOE’s pro-”smart” meter policy and not worth listening to.

Lastly and most importantly, no monetary or energy efficiency – whether real or imagined – is worth violating people’s health, safety, privacy or property.

Newly elected commissioners are advised to go through the docket on “smart” meters and read all the documented evidence covering every aspect of “smart” meters’ deleterious effects on health, safety, privacy and property that myself and others have sent the ACC. Incumbent commissioners should also visit the docket and read the information since it seems obvious they have not done so previously.

Sincerely,
Warren Woodward

PS – I want this posted to the docket as evidence that Commissioners were given the facts should that become necessary in any future lawsuits.

Cc: Governor Jan Brewer, Attorney General Tom Horne, Arizona State Representative Brenda Barton

“Scientists estimate that Earth’s level of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) is now 100-200 million times greater than it was 100 years ago, and that it has increased 1,000,000 times in just the last decade! All wireless transmitting devices emit EMR, but none more so than wireless smart meters in meshed grid networks.

Russia, China, India, Italy, France, Austria, Australia most European countries and Switzerland all have “Exposure Limits” (meant to protect the public from chronic, low-level, nonthermal effects of pulsed microwave emitted EMR) that are 100s to 1,000s of times lower/safer than Canada’s and the U.S.A.”

From Jerry Flynn’s PowerPoint Presentation