California County Bans SmartMeter Installations

kiwimate writes "Marin County in California has passed an ordinance (PDF) banning the installation of smart meters in unincorporated Marin. Among the reasons given are privacy concerns associated with measuring energy usage data moment by moment and the potential for adverse impact on emergency communication systems used by first responders and amateur radio operators. The ordinance also comments that 'the SmartMeters program ... could well actually increase total electricity consumption and therefore the carbon footprint,' citing 'some engineers and energy conservation experts.'" The ordinance also mentions "significant health questions" raised about "increased electromagnetic frequently radiation (EMF) emitted by the wireless technology in SmartMeters."

Re:Grow Ops in Marin?

[spun]

You think the unions want to keep meter readers in business? It wouldn't be unprecedented, we still have fire-tenders on electric trains. But I'd like to see some evidence. There is a very, very strong push by business interests to smear unions going on right now.

Re:Grow Ops in Marin?

[spun]

Marin Country holds a special kind of stupid. Nobody is as stupid as a rich, privileged person who thinks they are members of the counter-culture. Marin Country is full of that kind of person. San Francisco bankers and ad agency execs who think they are hip and cool because they work in San Francisco. Ex military industrial complex finks from southern California who got laid off by Reagan and found New Age spirituality. Huckster Gurus with an online degree from Spiritual American University. Marin is full of shallow people who think they are better, smarter, and closer to God than the average American.

Re:Grow Ops in Marin?

[onkelonkel]

"we still have fire-tenders on electric trains" - Not in North America, they got rid of the firemen and the brakemen a long time ago. Through freight trains typically run 2-man crews, Engineer and Conductor.

Re:Grow Ops in Marin?

[Yohahn]

Actually there are generally not many low-skilled jobs out there.. they slowly dissappear.
There was a research project in the 90's called "The midwest Job Gap". It's basic conclusion was there were 2-4 low-skill workers (for various reasons, these people aren't going to learn their way up to high skill jobs) for every 1 low skill job.

Here's an old reference to it: http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-4404804.html [highbeam.com]

The premise that there is enough work to go around for low skill workers is generally false.

Re:Grow Ops in Marin?

[afidel]

As someone who had to work with the uaw idiots as a non-union outside contractor let me tell you that most of the characterization of the union is an understatement. I had to come back to one plant 4 times before I could get a union electrician to come watch me install a couple racks of equipment because nothing could be plugged into an electric outlet without an electrician present. Then when we finally did get things plugged in the UPS's refused to run because the power was so messed up. He said yeah we know that transformer is messed up, and walked away. So a half million in equipment is afaik still sitting unpowered in racks in that data room because the electrician who couldn't be bothered to meet me for 4 scheduled appointments also couldn't be bothered to fix the power in the building.

Re:Grow Ops in Marin?

[Gordonjcp]

I track down RF problems, and half the time they turn out to be a smart meter, or an ethernet-over-power adaptor.

When my next door neighbours got a smart meter, nothing RF-y worked any more. Worst hit was the HF part of the spectrum, so that was one of my hobbies (amateur radio) knackered. However, all was not lost, because I can just use a different band, right? So I concentrated my attention on 13cm, where I can legally crank out a few hundred watts and obliterate the whole wifi spectrum - thus depriving the twat next door of his hobby, fapping over very unpleasant pr0n on his laptop.

Re:Grow Ops in Marin?

[spun]

Within the last 40 years, nearly all the gains in productivity have gone to the top 1%. The middle class has barely broken even. The poor have gotten poorer. I doubt the top 1% are actually responsible for those productivity gains, in fact I'm pretty sure the rest of us did the lion's share of the work. But we got shafted instead of getting rich, with a tiny minority harvesting all the fruits of our labors.

Smart meters != PLC

[dtmos]

It sounds like you're mixing up two technologies -- wireless smart meters [wikipedia.org] and power line communication [wikipedia.org]. The two are orthogonal and independent.

Because of the expense, very few smart meter systems use PLC (usually known as Broadband over Power Lines, or BPL, in the US). It's expensive to have to bypass all the transformers and other kit in the power grid that wasn't designed to pass communications in the first place, which is fortunate because PLC is nasty to the RF environment -- all those unshielded, long, high, conductors radiate. However, the great majority of smart meter systems with which I am familiar use either licensed channels in the UHF or 800/900 MHz land mobile bands, or use the unlicensed 868/900 or 2400 MHz ISM bands, and they're no more likely to cause interference than any other user of the spectrum.

Re:Grow Ops in Marin?

[drachenstern]

As someone who writes analysis code for the readings collected by smart meters, do you know how easy it is to isolate unusual activity by studying the averages versus actuals on a system like this and then send a few men out to do an inspection in a specific area versus the fleet of vehicles needed (carbon footprint) to read all those meters?

And I'm not going to go into the privacy concerns cos smart meters only relay usage, they know nothing about their installed locations.

I think this is about pot myself.