There was an article in the N.Y. Times recently about how PG&E has released a 300 page report about their intentions to start upgrading our power grid to being “smart”. They outlined some of the things that are going to happen.
PG&E is doing a capital improvement project on the power grid that will cost $800 million to $1.2 billion over the next 20 years. This is not the meter project, this an upgrade to the power grid, and the $2.2 billion+ for the meters is separate and already almost completed.
What we have to realize that the new meters are not necessary at all to improve the power grid .
All customers connected to the power grid are done by wires that eminate from a substation. And every circuit that feeds all areas goes to that substation.
They don’t really need to see how much power each meter is using, that is just for billing. All they have to do is monitor how much power is being used on each circuit coming out of the local substation. Then they will know what is really going on in the distribution system and can balance the loads or do whatever they want with pricing.
They should have started upgrading the power grid first, but no, they had to cook up a scam to make a bunch of money “real quick” with the meter project.
All the things that PG&E says about the meter project is just sales hype, lies and false advertising. The meter project is all about eliminating meter readers, monitoring individuals, and being able to charge more money to pay for it all, including false the advertising on prime time television networks.
I must say, I have probably see every one of those ads at least 10 times, boy are the writers and actors stupid. Those ads are a joke, and actually an insult to many.
Also in that article in the N.Y. Times, they did mention the meters briefly, they mentioned that the ZigBee radio system for the Home Area Networks is “not ready yet”. HA HA !, no HAN’s for now.

These lucrative grants have drawn in a host of corporate players, from utility companies to digital meter manufacturers to control software vendors.

Global companies like IBM, GE and Siemens are putting their full effort behind the “build-out” that will consolidate all of America into a single, integrated, communication-enabled electric delivery and monitoring system, collectively called Smart Grid.

Proponents of Smart Grid claim that it will empower the consumer to better manage his or her power consumption and hence, costs. The utility companies will therefore be more efficient in balancing power loads and requirements across diverse markets.

However, like carnival barkers, these Smart Grid hocksters never reveal where or how SmartGrid came into being, nor what the ultimate endgame aims to achieve; perhaps most of them have no idea either, but simply repeat the mantra as if they know what they are talking about.

Smart Grid is born out of Technocracy and not the other way around.

Some would argue that it is mere coincidence that these requirements are fully met with Smart Grid technology.

However, the reasons for the existence of Technocracy in the 1930’s are the same reasons given today:

energy efficiency
load balancing
fairness
alleviating poverty and hunger
etc.

The feigned concern for those in poverty and hunger in the underdeveloped nations is hollow.

Technocracy is pointedly amoral in its practice:
The means (their scientific method/process) justifies the end, whatever the end might turn out to be.

Technocracy is a totalitarian system of government where scientists, engineers and technicians monitor and control all facets of personal and civic life – economic, social and political.

Herein lies the real danger:
Who are these unelected controllers and why should anyone believe that they would be benevolent dictators instead of tyrants?
Americans are a freedom-loving people who would certainly reject Technocracy’s stealth takeover, if only they were aware of it. Indeed, Americans did pointedly reject Technocracy in the 1930’s!

Thirty years ago, a researcher’s mantra was “Follow the money, follow the power.” This must now be restated: “Follow the energy, follow the power.”

n 1932, Technocracy, Inc. called for the destruction of price-based economic systems and the creation of an energy-based accounting system that would measure inputs and outputs of human activity in terms of energy production, distribution and consumption.

The requirements for a successful system was co-authored by M. King Hubbert, a young geo-physicist who later developed “Hubbert’s Peak Oil Theory” that provided intellectual backing for the modern environmental or “green” movement.

Specifically, Hubbert detailed the requirements for a successful implementation of Technocracy:
Register on a continuous 24 hour-per-day basis the total net conversion of energy.
By means of the registration of energy converted and consumed, make possible a balanced load.
Provide a continuous inventory of all production and consumption
Provide a specific registration of the type, kind, etc., of all goods and services, where produced and where used
Provide specific registration of the consumption of each individual, plus a record and description of the individual.
[Scott, Howard et al, Technocracy Study Source, p. 232]

Technocracy Inc.’s leadership was intimately familiar with the early work of International Business Machine’s (IBM) computing technology. They clearly envisioned a time in the future where the advancement of the technology would meet the minimum level necessary to implement these requirements.

That day of advanced technology has come and the project is now called Smart Grid. The endgame is to implement a modernized version of historic Technocracy on a national, continental and global basis.

In addition to the United States, Smart Grid is being implemented in both Canada and Mexico. Planners are working on standards that will integrate all of North America into a single, unified Smart Grid system.

Moreover, there is a serious initiative underway to create a Global Smart Grid that will integrate all the continents on the globe – high-voltage electrical transmission links that are capable of transferring large amounts of energy from continent to continent.

The GENI project is gathering momentum and is endorsed by,
the Dalai Lama
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Sen. James Jeffords (I-VT)
Noel Brown (North American Director, United Nations Environmental Program)
the United Nations
the governments of Canada New Zealand, Switzerland, and China,
…among others.

The nature of the global grid is revealed on the Terrawatts website:
“There is a new world wide web emerging right before our eyes. It is a global energy network and, like the Internet, it will change our culture, society and how we do business. More importantly, it will alter how we use, transform and exchange energy.

“There is no energy supply problem, there is an energy distribution problem, and the emerging solution is a new world wide web of electricity.”
The concept of a Network of Things was presented in “Smart Grid – The Implementation of Technocracy?”

As the traditional Internet connects people (e.g., Facebook, e-mail, videos, web sites), the Energy Web will connect inanimate objects like thermostats, appliances, meters, station controllers, data collection and control computer systems, etc. for the automatic balancing of load consumption across the target power grid.

Once computer programs and algorithms are in place, such a grid will operate autonomously with minimal human intervention.

The Global Energy Network Institute (GENI) presents this Dymaxion ™ Map of the world from the perspective of the North Pole that reveals the global grid currently under construction. The only part of planet earth left untouched is Antarctica.

Technocracy is a collectivist, utopian political-economic system run by engineers, scientists and technicians.

It has the potential to be far more oppressive and controlling than Communism, Socialism or Fascism. Without Smart Grid, we are assured that there will be no rule of Technocracy.Technocracy, Inc. was the birth place of the energy-based economic-political model seen behind national, regional, continental and global Smart Grid initiatives
R. Buckminster Fuller, a Technocrat at heart, pioneered the design for a Global energy network that is now referred to as, “the new World Wide Web of Electricity”
All of Technocracy, Inc.’s original requirements for an energy-based system are process of being met
Global organizations like the World Economic Forum and the IEEE Standards Organization are fully backing and enabling the global Smart Grid
The global Smart Grid and global warming movements are interdependent
It is not clear who will oversee any or all facets of the global Smart Grid.

The implied suggestion is that it will be the same engineers and global corporations that are currently developing it. There is no suggestion anywhere in literature that there is a plan for a hand-off of the resulting system to a political structure that serves the people.

The negative aspects of Smart Grid are seldom mentioned. Take cyber-security, for instance. Picture a tech-savvy criminal who breaks into your energy profile data by hacking the computers at your local substation: Based on your power usage, he knows when you are home and when you are not home, when you are awake and when you are asleep, whether you have a security system turned on or off, etc.

Armed with such information, your possessions and personal safety would be at his disposal.

With the global groundswell of activity to create the global Smart Grid, it is doubtful that the initiative can be stopped, especially since it is so closely intertwined with the global warming movement and hence, Sustainable Development and even the United Nation’s Agenda 21 program.

In the United States, Smart Grid is escalating without any legislative oversight or involvement; in other words, it is being implemented exclusively by Executive Branch fiat. The same is true in other countries.

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_energy52.htm

@Redi Kilowatt
Not that I am a Wikipedia believer (c.f. their miserable entry on SMs), but they put the lower boundary for MW at 0.3 GHz. “Microwaves are electromagnetic waves with wavelengths ranging from as long as one meter to as short as one millimeter, or equivalently, with frequencies between 300 MHz (0.3 GHz) and 300 GHz.” That said, RF engineers have generally set it higher, as you say. Whence the controversy? Do we just want to be able to use the label “microwave” because it can help to have a visceral effect on a listener?

Great post, except the new meters don’t transmit microwave frequencies, the mesh networks run in the 900MHz band which in not microwave.
The collector meters transmit on 850 MHz @ 1.51 watts of RF on the mobile phone GSM system to land based receivers. They do not transmit to satellites .
Most all mobile phones now transmit about 2.5 tenths of a watt (250mw), so a collector meter is roughly 6 times as powerful as a modern mobile phone.
Both the mesh networks and the mobile phones are separate from the power grid, the meters are not the grid.

CarboShield is a coating based on carbon metamaterials intended to guard rooms in buildings, technical installations, electronic modules and components, etc against electromagnetic radiation.

CarboShield is optimized for radiation extinction over a very wide frequency band. It absorbs electromagnetic radiation, i.e. the radiation enters into the material and is not backscattered.

Characteristics:
Compared to conventional shielding materials, CarboShield absorbs electromagnetic radiation instead of reflecting it.

Special features of CarboShield are:

simple processing by all common workman-like and industrial means of application,
applicable to very different surfaces and geometries,
thin coatings produce excellent results,
maximum protection through absorption.

CarboShield exhibits high and constant absorption in a very wide frequency range. Just a very thin, singular coating can produce attenuation of more than 50%.

The attenuation or extinction properties required in a technical application can be set quite arbitrarily through the layer structure.

CarboShield is suitable for all applications in which effective suppression of electromagnetic radiation is called for, ensuring the necessary reliability and functionality of sensitive technical devices for example, safeguarding humans and animals against exposure to radiation, or maintaining the security of information by preventing electromagnetic espionage.

http://www.future-carbon.de/downloads/Flyer_CarboShield_v01_00_EN.pdf

http://www.future-carbon.de/en/CarboShield-electromagnetic%20shielding