Smart Meters - Public Service Commission

Electric bill skyrockets after smart meter; opt-out
option coming, but will cost
April 5th, 2012, 12:00 am · · posted by Laura Barron-Lopez
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The electric bill in January 2011 was $150.23, the usual cost
of the monthly bill and typical for this small Laguna Woods home.
One year later, the bill was $514.34.
What could have possibly caused this$364 increase – a leap of 243 percent? A new state-of-the art Jacuzzi?
Millions of holiday lights to rival Disneyland?
No, Pat Wiseman said. The only change to his parents’ home was a new smart meter from the electric
company, Southern California Edison. It had been installed at the end of October.
Smart meters are part of the new Edison SmartConnect grid. They connect to “a secure wireless network” that SCE
says gives customers greater control to manage their usage – even from a cellphone, many miles from home. Smart
meters are also read remotely, so employees don’t have to trek to the house to read the meter. By the end of this
year, 5 million smart meters are slated to be installed in Southern California. SCE is almost done installing them in
Orange County – but there may soon be a way to opt out (at a price).
It was after his mother’s smart meter was installed that Wiseman started seeing problems. Between Nov. 10 and Dec.
13, the usage for the 1,600 square-foot home was 62.4 kilowatt hours, he said. Between Dec. 13 and Jan. 12, it
was 102.1 kilowatt hours.
Wiseman argues that there’s no reason the consumption should have changed, because his mother’s habits did not.
She lives alone, spends most of her time in her bed, and has one 24-hour care person with her. He lays the blame for
the astounding increase squarely on the new meter.
Edison's SmartConnect campaign shows a cheerful consumer.
When we first spoke to SCE, a spokesman said there is no way of telling if there are accuracy problems without
examining the individual usage of the consumer. But the company said it has not had complaints about accuracy.
Instead, he said, consumers say the new meters improve their ability to track their usage.
However, since December of 2008, theCalifornia Public Utilities Commission has received 946 complaints on
SCE’s smart meters, ranging from concern over health dangers to privacy and billing issues, to simply not wanting
the smart meter at all.
The health issues people complain about include dizziness, nausea and headaches – symptoms some say are
caused by the radio frequency (RF) radiation that the smart meters emit – as well as worries about being exposed to
possible carcinogens.