The state’s two largest utilities, Central Vermont Public Service and Green Mountain Power, have both opted for wireless smart meters. Controversy over their use became an issue in the Legislature this past session with opponents winning passage of a bill that prohibits the utilities from charging an opt-out fee until a least July 2013.
Vermont Electric Cooperative in Johnson has virtually finished its installation of a wired system of smart meter technology similar to what WEC plans, according to Patt. VEC is larger, with 34,000 members in 74 towns in northern Vermont. Burlington Electric began its installation of smart meters in April, using the wireless technology.
In northern California, PG&E originally used powerline carrier (PLC) meters for their first generation SmartMeters. But they did not test them first. PG&E had their ratepayers pay for untold millions of the first generation PLC meters, and installed over 800,000 of them. The project was a failure, the meters could not transmit the data accurately or reliably through are old ferite core transformers.
ReplyDeletePG&E wasted millions of dollars and had to recall (yank) all the PLC meters. Rather than start upgrading the electrical power grid first, they cooked up a new system that uses a wireless "radio smart grid" and use wireless meters. Then, PG&E tricked their customers into thinking that by installing a radio smart grid for revenue collection was upgrading the electrical power grid. It's not at all.
In all my years of working with radio electronics, I have never seen a radio network referred to as a grid, until now.
And guess what, the propaganda campaign worked, now even some of the activists believe that the revenue collection radio network is the electrical power grid.