(Under present tariffs, the utility discounts but doesn’t pay us for electricity. So far, over three years, we’ve “donated” only a few tens of dollars worth of surplus electricity to the grid, implying that estimates based on the old meter have been validated by recent experience. We could only love our smart meter more if it dispensed twenty-dollar bills and made the tomatoes ripen faster.)
At one point, it seemed possible that the bad public-relations results of the meter installations could be attributed to bad communications. The KFSN news story said that in the area most affected, the Public Utility Commission had allowed the utility, which charges based on a five-level rate system, to significantly increase the rates at the top levels—with very little public awareness. Thus, while at level 1, Fresno customers pay only 11 cents per kWh used. By level 5, it rises to 44 cents. On hot days in the San Joaquin Valley, with the air conditioning on, usage can quickly escalate into the higher tiers.
SACRAMENTO, WE HAVE A PROBLEM
For the most part, consumers—at least the ones who’d seen their bills escalate dramatically—weren’t buying those explanations. On May 10, the San Jose Mercury News reported that the number of cutomers with smart meters who received innacurate charges “may be as high as 23,000,” even though PG&E had earlier insisted that only “a few” customers had received incorrect bills.2 While the company could not say “how many of those customers were overcharged, how many were undercharged or the total sum of the inaccuracies,” it was going to conduct “a major overhaul of its customer service efforts.”
That may signal the start of a needed public outreach and display of humility, but consider some numbers. PG&E has already installed 5.5 million smart meters (Fig. 2). It is adding around 10,000 a day. From that base, PG&E has said there were 43,376 cases where smart meters were involved in “some kind of problem.” The company also said 23,000 meters were installed improperly, but didn’t explain how it is possible to improperly install a standard form-factor meter that snaps into a standard service-drop socket. Later, PG&E said that all 23,000 of these were gas meters.
There are some jokes for late-night TV there, but let’s just attribute that to an overly hasty database query. Of the electric meters, 9000 couldn’t connect with the wireless network, and 11,376 didn’t retain consumer usage information. It could be a line-of-sight problem or a quality control problem on the flash-memory side. Neither of those possibilities is an obvious cause for a high bill, though.
So it’s still a mystery. In speaking to the reporters, PG&E did stress that 99% of its smart meters have had no problems. But, the Mercury noted, “One percent still means that 50,000 customers are being impacted, a figure [PG&E spokespersons] admit is far too high.”
Since this drama strikes close to home, even for utility customers outside of California, readers interested in tracking developments can access PG&E’s progress reports at www.pge.com/SmartMeterCPUCreports. Don’t be put off by the volume of pages (over 600), as it’s a collection of all monthly reports since August 2006. The “Issues” and “Risks” summary pages make interesting reading, but they do not provide any sudden insights into the roots of the problems.
References
1. “Accuracy of Digital Electricity Meters,” Brian Seal and Mark McGranaghan, EPRI, www.smartgridnews.com/artman/uploads/1/smart_meters_epri.pdf
2. “PG&E Acknowledges Thousands Of Inaccurate Utility Bills,” Dana Hull, San Jose Mercury News, www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_15057399?source=rss&nclick_check=1