In Colorado, the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has given the green-light to Xcel Energy (the state’s largest electrical utility) to “go smart,” spending more than half a billion dollars on high-tech company-wide digital equipment and “smart meters” to be installed on their customers’ homes and businesses.
It sounds good. You get a smart, state-of-the-art, digital device installed in the place of your old analog power meter, and it communicates with the grid – hundreds or thousands of times a day – with granular data on when (and how much) you use electricity.
No more meter readers!
What’s more, you have a lot more information to work with, if you care to work with it, in making choices about your home’s energy usage.
And Xcel Energy gets more information, too – who’s using electricity, how much, and which areas and neighborhoods need more or less power routed their way.
But hold on.
A closer look at the smart grid trend may give you pause.
Is this really smart?
There are many downsides pointed out by smart-meter detractors, from the costs (the utility company passes those onto your utility bill) to the reported unreliability of smart meters to correctly report your power usage, to concerns about privacy (what are they allowed to do with all that information they collect on you?).
But the biggest concerns seem to be health related.
Smart meters do a couple of things which can pose health risks:
… But your smart meter does not operate in isolation.
Your smart meter is singing in chorus with all the other smart meters in your neighborhood, and in the next neighborhood, and everywhere within the “mesh” of cell towers and reception equipment being installed by the utility company (and paid for by you).
So no one knows the true impact of RF radiation – and dirty power – that could be attributed to the smart grid phenomenon.
But it’s likely to be greater than the smart meter’s staunchest allies suggest.
Get in touch with your qualified local electrician today. No one’s smarter about smart meters than your electrician. Maybe the dirty power and RF radiation problems in your particular home are not that big a deal – your electrician can test and find out. But maybe having the electrician check your system for electromagnetic interference, and having a whole-home dirty power filter installed, could be the smartest moves you could make.