Smart meters cause concern in county
Residents say they have issues with safety and security
By Collin McRann
Staff Reporter
With the San Miguel Power Association getting ready to install smart electric power meters in Telluride this summer, a few residents have voiced concerns.
Two residents, Bärbel Hacke of Lawson Hill and Elisabeth Gick of Telluride, have presented a letter to the association’s board of directors with around 80 signatures attached to it.
Gick said she is worried about heath and safety issues associated with the meters.
“I would like to err on the side of caution,” Gick said. “I feel a little queasy about this whole thing, and I will take the opt-out option, but I would like it to be more affordable for people who want to take it. Three hundreed dollars a year is not affordable to a lot of people.”
Two residents, Bärbel Hacke of Lawson Hill and Elisabeth Gick of Telluride, have presented a letter to the association’s board of directors with around 80 signatures attached to it.
Gick said she is worried about heath and safety issues associated with the meters.
“I would like to err on the side of caution,” Gick said. “I feel a little queasy about this whole thing, and I will take the opt-out option, but I would like it to be more affordable for people who want to take it. Three hundreed dollars a year is not affordable to a lot of people.”
SMPA plans to install the meters this summer. The association initiated the transition and says the new meters have several advantages over the old ones because they record power usage with more detail, staff is not required to manually read every meter and they also provide information to quickly locate the cause of power outages. SMPA is stipulating that if a resident wants to keep an old meter, they will be charged $25 per month to have a technician check the readings. SMPA has been planning the transition for some time.
But not everyone is convinced that the meters are better. Smart meters planned for installation report electrical usage remotely via the electrical wires. This has caused some concern because sources on and off the Internet report that smart meters can detect what electrical devices or appliances are in use within a home.
However, the association maintains, only overall electrical usage is recorded.
“There are some misconceptions with people thinking the meters can do more than they do,” SMPA Communications Executive Becky Mashburn said. “Some people were thinking the meters could actually identify the activity that’s taking place in the home. They can tell us the energy use, just like the current meter can. But they stop at the exterior of a building and measure and record energy use and that’s the only info they provide, not what someone is doing.”
With a continuous reading of a customer’s electrical usage, the association says it can help customers more closely monitor their monthly bill and potentially lower it.
Another potential set of problems brought up by Gick and Hacke are security issues related to the information the meters transfer. Hacke said she is worried about hackers getting information out of the meters. Mashburn said the association’s meters are secure with little risk of outside interference.
Meter hacking has been an issue in other parts of the country, but in most cases customers themselves have done the hacking to lower their monthly electrical bill. A May 2010 FBI statement warns electrical companies about customers tampering with smart meters to lower their bills.
Mashburn said the meters’ transferred signal is encrypted and can only be read by proprietary equipment. She added the equipment has also been selected to provide the best service to the area and reading the.
SMPA has around 14,000 meters to read every month, Mashburn said.
In Hacke and Gick’s letter, the two state they simply want clear answers about the meters and why they are being implemented. They also request another public meeting to be held in Telluride. Their letter has been published in today’s edition of the Planet on page 10.
The two also presented the letter to the San Miguel County Board of Commissioners, but were directed to take the issue up with SMPA board members.
“I still feel that even if it’s last minute, I still have the right to a good answer,” Gick said. “We did an informal survey, if people knew about smart meters, and it was pretty funny that a lot of people thought we were talking about parking meters.”
http://www.telluridenews.com/articles/2012/05/18/news/doc4fb65de82acca532729707.txt
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