The La Plata Electric Association board of directors acted correctly on Nov. 19 when it voted unanimously to allow members to opt out of the co-op’s smart-meter program. Allowing members who do not want the meters a choice only seems fair.
The board was also right to charge members who do opt out. The only question is whether the $20 per quarter fee is enough. It costs money to read meters the old-fashioned way, and LPEA members who accept the new meters should not have to subsidize those whose fear of smart meters imposes that cost.
Besides, those who opt out are not being asked much. It works out to $80 per year, or less than $7 per month. An earlier proposal from the co-op staff called for a $50 per month fee.
Opting out also imposes a cost on the system. Smart meters measure and report important information about fluctuations in energy use, power outages and peak use times. That information will allow LPEA and other utilities to more closely monitor the grid and better balance supply and demand. By providing immediate, real-time information about power outages, they will help utilities to isolate the problem more quickly and minimize both the extent and duration of outages. Over time, smart meters and the data they provide will also allow for more clean, local, renewable energy.
LPEA has been installing the smart meters across its service area, which includes Durango and most of Archuleta County. About 29,000 have been installed, with Bayfield and Vallecito expected to get them in the first half of 2015.
That date is relevant on another level as well. We are more than a decade into the 21st century. The Internet is central to communication, information and entertainment, and more and more gadgets talk to or over it, usually wirelessly. We have smart phones, and of course, we are going to have smart meters. It is the world we live in.
And that world is already awash in the same kind of electromagnetic energy smart meters employ – to no ill effect. Every radio station, television broadcaster, wireless Internet connection and cellphone tower is sending out electromagnetic energy, typically at many times the strength of a smart meter’s signal.
Smart meters will barely add to that. They transmit for a total of about one minute per day. One estimate holds that in 20 years of use, a smart meter will give off as much electromagnetic energy as a cellphone user is exposed to in a single 30-minute call.
Privacy concerns are equally overwrought. Smart meters provide information as to time and amount of electricity used, but they do so in the aggregate. Somebody who cared may be able to figure out that some of the always-on use is the refrigerator, but is that really any invasion of privacy? They might also figure the extra use in the evening was the TV, but they would not be able to identify what was watched. (The cable company might know that now.)
The information smart meters provide says little about anyone. The neighbors can already tell when the lights are on, and LPEA is not likely to know much more.
Smart meters are not about surveillance, big government, gun control or the United Nations. They are not a threat to our Fourth Amendment rights.
They are about better, more efficient use of electricity and boosting utilities’ ability to integrate new and cleaner sources of power. And those are good things.
