As part of the heavily censored internal e-mails released by PG&E to the Bay Area media late last year after their ‘Smart’ Meter Program Director William Devereaux was caught snooping on customers’ e-mails, we discovered from the above correspondence that the utilities are not only dealing with widespread local government resistance and civil disobedience, they are apparently also facing a homegrown monkeywrenching campaign. Some residents appear to be so fed up with the ongoing unsolicited intrusion of wireless into their neighborhoods that they are willing to risk going to prison to rid themselves of health- harming microwave radiation. This is an indication of how desperate people have become while state government twiddles its thumbs.
“DCU” means ‘data collector units’ or antennae that have been illegally installed throughout California, violating franchise agreements that the utility has with local governments. (See pic of gas DCU mounted on a utility pole below). The DCU’s collect data sent by the ‘smart’ meters and then relay this to a local Verizon cell tower.
It’s hilarious that they would say that anti-smart meter activists are ‘losing traction with local governments’ when if anything the movement is stronger than ever. Thirty-eight cities and counties in CA are now are demanding a halt to smart meter installations. In addition, every single local government in Santa Cruz County is united in opposition to ‘smart’ meters. The fact that the state legislature, governor, and impotent CPUC are failing to reflect public opinion is an indicator of how much they have become servants of industry and forgotten the people they are meant to represent.
One has to ask- who is the greater threat to public safety? A utility that is exposing people to illegal levels of microwave radiation in their own homes- causing widespread health problems and fire safety risks– or people who are peacefully blocking trucks and those who are disabling unwanted health damaging infrastructure?
PG$E Corporate Management will tell any lie to further their own cause.
PG&E corporate management actually lied to families in Hinkley, California and children suffered and died exposing themselves to the poisoned water that PG&E Management claimed was safe when they knew it was NOT.
Would wrapping the meter with aluminium foil stop the RF? How about copper foil? If this at least prevents PG&E from reading the meter remotely, it would be an easy and cheap form of protest. I have already wrapped my smart meter with aluminium and if I hear complaints from PG&E, that will tell me that it is working.
Hi Andy,
Just as you will discover if you wrap a cell phone in aluminum foil, or wrap food in a microwave oven, aluminum foil is a great way to ‘foil’ microwaves. So yes, if you did wrap your meter in aluminum foil (shiny side in) it would almost certainly block signals, forcing PG&E to come out and remove the foil. The danger is that you might reflect the microwaves into your living environment, possibly even making your exposure worse. So use caution with this one. Unless you can wrap the entire meter with foil, I would avoid doing this. You can also use foil on your wall to reflect microwaves away from your living environment if you already have a smart meter.
How about using a lead shield ?
Put lead on the wall behind the meter, and also build an easily removable meter enclosure out of lead, but also build a flap that can be flipped up to read the meter.
I think this will stop the RF from being transmitted, but I don’t think it will really solve the problems of the new radio meters.
Even if you pay PG&E to allegedly supposedly disable the transmitters, the meters themselves cause inadvertent problems with power quality and condition., especially in older houses with 2 wire systems (no ground).
And I really do question what PG&E tells the media about the new radio meters.
PG&E says that the new meter is installed but it is supposedly not transmitting yet, and the meter is still read by a meter reader monthly for at least 3 months or more “to make sure it’s working properly” and/or until they build the DCU’s to collect and repeat the data to a cell phone tower, which could be many years if ever in Marin County.
In Corte Madera a few months ago, PG&E installed a new radio meter and the customer had problems immediately with her security lights coming on for no reason, wasting energy and costing her extra money. The article was in the IJ, and is public knowledge. They described how PG&E removed the first new meter, replaced it with another “lower powered radio meter”, and the problem still persisted. So to solve the problem, PG&E yanked the new meter and put in an old electro-mechanical meter like what has always been there, and the problem with wasting energy went away for her.
So, now PG&E is installing new radio meters saying that the transmitters are not enabled, then if people don’t want the transmitter enabled, they have to pay PG&E $270 to supposedly disable an allegedly disabled transmitter. WHAT UP ?
Sounds like extortion to me, PG&E are the OG’s (Original Gangsters) of northern California. Pacific Graft and Extortion.
Lead? You’re worried about low-power non-microwave RF and you want to handle lead?
Did you know that the supporting chicken wire for your stucco walls is a pretty good Faraday shield from RF entering your home?
But still – your neighbor’s and Starbuck’s WiFi has the same (non-) damaging effect as yours, your cell phone, Bluetooth headset, cordless phone.
If you’re serious about this pathetic anti-RF plight, this should be the last time you use your computer or most any electronics. Make life simple. Turn it all off and go into ‘Survivor’ mode. Avoid your coffee shops, grocery stores, gas stations, cell towers, police cars, strip the antennas off the top of the County building…
Hey Whackie Techie, Please provide the peer-reviewed science to support your assertion that wireless technology does no harm. Just because it’s everywhere doesn’t mean it’s safe. Here’s a bunch of studies that says you’re wrong: http://sagereports.com/smart-meter-rf/?page_id=404
Also, it’s getting really tiresome you people who insist that anyone objecting to smart meters must stop all use of electronics. What happened to choice? Just because you drive a car and consume gasoline, I assume you don’t want to go swimming in petrol. It’s the same thing with rapidly increasing wireless. A little may not do much harm, but we are saturating our communities with it. Is that smart? Nope.
@onthelevelblog if you took the time to read Whackie Techie’s reply to the comment you see that he/she never once said that wireless tech does not harm. He/she never said everyone who objected to the smart meters should turn off all electronics.
Whackie Techie seems to be appaled at your advocating the use of highly toxic lead to stop the RF signals around your smart meter. Whackie Techie explains that RE signals are generated by every electronic device in your home as well as the computer you are using to reply to this post. Most of those same devices output more RF than the smart meter ever will in its lifetime. Nobody said it wasn’t harmful but please people dont start telling people to bring highly toxic lead back into thier homes for something as trivial as this. There are other ways to block the signal with less harmful effects to the user.
@Zip Many of us use no wireless devices, and so our computers do not broadcast RF like WiFi’ed computers. Nor do we use smartphones or even cellphones. Our telephones are also wired. The tiny amount emitted by all electronics are nothing compared to “smart” meter pulses.
“Smart” meters emit a bizarre and unprecedented pattern of high RF spikes, unlike any other RF-emitter in use. They are better analogized to RADAR than anything else. They can pulse 20 times a second. The peak power density is remarkably high. Your central nervous system does not “time-average” the spikes, like the spin-doctors at PG&E do.
This is the problem. How much exposure is too much – it is cumulative. CHEMICAL – AIR – WATER – FOOD? How much exposure will it take for your cells to begin to mutate/cancer. For your mind to be sharp. In Orange county Alzheimers is up more then 250%.
Chicken wire in stucco acting as a Faraday shield for RF ?
Most mid-aged homes (say 50 years or newer?) have drywall walls, not stucco walls!
Is there chicken wire behind or inside drywall? I don’t think so, but I could be wrong.
Also – I live in Toronto – is there anything similar in terms of protesting smart meters being deployed by Hydro 1 (our Provincial electrical utility in Ontario) ?
Cheers,
Sir
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Why not install a jammer near the smartmeter block data transmission, simple and cheap device coud run a couple small batteries
Larry,
if someone did what you said (and got snitched on and busted for it), the FCC would come down on them like a ton of bricks, and make an example out of them.
The FCC would send vans with antennas into your area sweeping for errant signals for a few months or more. You would freak out.
And keep in mind, the gas meters use 450MHz UHF, and so do business radios and public safety agencies. And the SmartMeters use 900MHz UHF, and so do public safety agencies and mobile phones. You wouldn’t want to be responsible for interfering with an emergency call to the fire department reporting another SmartMeter fire would you ? Your house might also burn down.
Estupido !
Hey Redi KW, there’s no problem with transmitting in the ISM bands. That’s why they are UNLICENSED! You just need to stay within the transmission limit specified by the FCC. Cell (mobile) phones are in the licensed bands, so you wouldn’t be interfering with them. Get your facts straight before you spout off.
So could potentially jam the 900MHz signals from the smart meters while still being FCC compliant. If you check the FCCID code and how the unit was passed, it will clearly state that the unlicensed device must be able to accept interference that may cause it not to function properly. The regulations for the licensed bands are different.
Why not just put a grounded Faraday Cage wth double layers with simple copper fine mesh screening up around your meter, and back it up with a second one side the house also grounded, but if your really into this you would need to truely surround the entire meter all the way around the meter otherwise “RF leakage” could occur through the wall board and studs, but one would have to be careful about such cutting behind the meter as you really have no idea what structures might be involved in such a modification, let alone where the power mains really are. One would have to put up a transparent RF screen in front of the such meters so a meter reader could view it, and record the numbers.
But I am not worried about such stuff, I have a HAMM radio, that put’s out far more power then any “smart meter” ever could with no ill effects what so ever. People think the word radiation is equal to radioactive, not even close to the truth. Sun light, in fact ALL light no matter what wae length is a form of electro-magnetic “radiation” throw out your microwave oven while your at it, get rid of your wireless phone and cell phone, your “frying” your brain.
Ham radio transmissions are typically at far lower frequencies than 1 Ghz so any influence on health would be minimal, if any. Smart Meter frequencies approach the same used in radar, and it is common knowledge that police speed radar units have caused cancer in officers who had rested their radar guns on their laps or car seat.
Radar technicians contracted cancer from years of working on live radar equipment, as had U.S. embassy employees who become ill when Soviet agents targeted the U.S. embassy in Moscow with microwave energy.
So the power industry arguments that the radiation is “safe” is demonstrably false, and there is abundant research to show that microwave energy can be extremely dangerous at moderate power levels. It’s not merely the heating effect that damages DNA but a combination of factors that make low power microwave energy a health hazard. Microwave radiation damage at any power level is cumulative so that long term exposure should be avoided. Low level microwave energy is a “slow-kill” weapon. It will trigger cancers in some people but not others. As the power level increases, more people become ill more quickly. There is probably no “safe” level of microwave energy for life-long exposure.
I highly recommend anyone concerned about EMFs or radiation exposure to look in to the metaphysical qualities of crystals, as there are some which are none to transmute the harmful effects of our technology, and purify the EM field. Such crystals would include: Fluorite, Amazonite, Tourmaline, and Herkimer Diamonds. Also check out “orgonite” or “orgone generators”, which are proven technologies which are capable of amplifying the crystalline frequencies, while harmonizing the stagnant radiation (deadly orgone) with the living energy of the earth. And the best part is, it even works for skeptics. 😉
Nice try Ava. While I agree that EMFs and dirty electricity from smart meters are a huge problem, there is no scientific evidence to back up the claims of ANY sort of protection from “orgonite”, “amazonite” (hilarious!!!), or any of the products you’re trying to sell.
Shame on you.
How about just reengineering the smart meters to be more health conscious? Realistically it shouldn’t have to transmit power usage data more than once a month, to inform billing. It could also make a transmission if there’s an internal error in the meter. But aside from those 2 circumstances, it’s unclear why they’d need to be working all day, or why a single transmission of Customer_ID and Usage_Count would need to utilize high-frequency or high-amplitude signals. Simple data of that sort could be transmitted by binary pulses similar to those of a mid-20th-century telephone, with very, very low power.
THIS IS AN AGENDA 21 WEAPON! TOO MANY PEOPLE ON EARTH! WAKE UP PEOPLE!
You are correct. The meters do not need to transmit as often as they do. Since the microwave signals are powered by the customer’s power usage, utilities have a very good (dishonest) reason for making them transmit as often as they can.
According to this document:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Elster+REX2+Smart+Meter+Teardown/5710/1
“If a specific household has concerns about their meter being used as a repeater, they can contact their utility company to request that their Elster meter transmits power readings just once a day.”
Yet, if a Zigbee-enabled Elster meter has been installed that transmits eight fruitless pulses per minute “searching” for in home devices wishes to avoid the extra 2.4 Ghz RFR pulses, there is currently NO solution available.
http://publicservice.vermont.gov/sites/psd/files/Topics/Electric/Smart_Grid/Vermont%20DPS%20Smart%20Meter%20Measurement%20Report%20-%20Final.pdf
“Elster is working on a firmware update to be released by the end of June 2013 that would shut off the HAN radio emissions until such time that the devices are ready to be commissioned to pair with IHDs.”