That power outage in southern California was a typical example of the sad condition of our aging power grid in this country. Until they upgrade the power grid to being “smart”, we can expect more problems in the future.
Actually the centralized distribution of electricity is partly the cause of the problems, and the deregulating of the industry made it worse.
It’s great for the power corporations, now that they can wheel and deal power all over the country on aging transmission lines that were only designed for regional use, but the power grid was not really designed for that purpose.
The problem this time originated in Arizona, they say it was an error made by people working on a switch in a substation, and then we have what they call the cascading effect. It knocked the San Onofre nuclear plant off line, so that made the outage larger.
I have read reports that the power grid in this country is in deplorable condition, and more catastrophic outages will keep happening until we modernize the grid and/or decentralize the distribution systems.
What bothers some of us the most, is that the corporations so far have influenced the government to proceed with the meter project first. The new meters won’t do a damn thing to upgrade the power grid, but was a clever way to make a bunch of money manufacturing, selling and installing millions of cheaply made meters that were very expensive to buy for the ratepayers.
These meters were made in some countries where pay their workers in rice.
Then , the government has the audacity to say that the new meters are the power grid !. And that these new meters will somehow save energy by having people buy expensive cheaply made appliances and automation systems (again , made in foreign countries by slave labor) that can show how much energy that they use. These Home Area Networks systems are not even working yet, but there are plenty of other automation systems that have been working fine for decades.
This marketing campaign about the HAN’s is a joke in itself. Anyone with half a brain can read the rating plate which is required on ALL devices and appliances sold in this country that shows the current draw in amps, and the voltage required to operate it. It’s real simple math, even an elementary school student can easily see how much energy each appliance and device uses in their home.
At least the power grid is safe from being hacked in this country, since everything is so archaic and antiquated and there is no interoperability between the nodes. That is what we should worry about, the power grid which is our generation and distribution infrastructure, not the meters.
Customer usage data if allowed to fall into the wrong hands could hurt some people, but it is important to know that nobody will ever be able to determine what you are using your electricity for, only the total amount used, and now, not even what time that you use it unless one has an old Time of Use meter.
The marketeers only know what kind of appliances and devices a customer has on purchases made with a credit card, or if they voluntarily give out personal information to the seller under the guise of “this is for your warranty”.
Any cash purchases or bank deposits under $10,000 are not reported to the IRS. And law enforcement needs a search warrant to look at a customers electricity bills.
Some people are paranoid about “the feds” finding out if people have a home business because of high electricity bills, but in my area, there are many wealthy households whose electricity bills are probably 10 times the average apartment dweller. Having a high electricity bill for a single family house is not a problem or a sign of illegal activity. And most apartments, condos and townhouses have very small main electrical services, and not much room to have very many 1000 watt HPS lights.

It won’t take much for some hacker to make that “bump” in power by switching 100’s of meters off and on over and over by remote from the convenience of his armchair.

Here’s a list of 98 computer attacks, network intrusions, or data breaches listed on a spreadsheet because there are so many. This is for 5 months!

news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-20071830-245/keeping-up-with-the-hackers-chart/

So don’t worry, your data and the grid are safe because the power company knows all about computers!

Please check out the new example letter text that covers this. Make sure you put the power company and PUC on notice and let them know they will be liable!
https://stopsmartmeters.org/sample-letter-to-utility/

No, Alex Jones is 100 percent right on in his rant.
He did not go off and spout out misconceptions about the new meters, actually he really didn’t say much about the meter program at all, except that it is a ripoff.
My opinion is that I agree with everything he said, and couldn’t have said it better myself.
He mentions Yuppies who are so narccascistic that they won’t admit that they have been brainwashed and ripped off .
Thanks for that great video Smarter Meters.
At first, I said to myself, no more smart meter videos, based on most of them that I have viewed so far, but I figured I’d give this one a shot.
This is a good video that sums up what is happening in the world with the corporate rule being promoted. It’s not so much about smart meters but the population being dumbed down and brainwashed. Sorry about any mis-spellings, but my spell check is not working at this site.

I’d love to see someone else make a video commentary on SmartMeters and get half a million hits in a month.

What do you think of Alex Jones’ SmartMeter video?

http://youtu.be/ppAM6zreVKw?t=1m14s

do you think he’s hurting the cause?

My favorite one was the electric toothbrush story. That is almost as good as the vibrator story.

I’ve seen that video, it’s pathetic. Just about everything he says is false, except that the new meters transmit usage data on RF.
I could go on and on about the falsehoods of this video, but it would be a waste of time.
If you believe this garbage, then you must believe anything that people post on the internet.
Actually, videos like that hurt our movement against the new meters.

The power grid in this country has not been upgraded yet, but PG&E has announced that they plan to start an upgrade after the meter project is completed.
In Europe, they upgraded their power grid to being “smart” before they did the meters, that enabled them to utilize power line carrier technology (wired) for revenue collection systems in some areas.
I read that a CIA security expert reported that these new power grids in other countries have been already compromised (hacked), and it could easily happen here even though we don’t have a smart grid yet, the meters could be hacked and cause big problems for revenue collection and concerns for the privacy of the customers.
Encryption keys can be cracked, coders work tirelessly for months to hack codes.
There was a big hack a few years ago that disabled all the ATM machines in this country. Very little on the mainstream corporate media news about it, but it cost the banksters billions of dollars. No doubt that the banks found a way to recoup their losses from their customers and us taxpayers.
Yes, I appreciate all the workers who work very hard to keep our electricity on.
Originally, there were around 900 meter readers in PG&E territory, and 22 in Marin county. Now with this new profiteering meter program, in Marin PG&E has eliminated about half of the meter readers, under pressure from the shareholders. But only a relatively small percentage of the new transmitting meters billing data is being received by the data collectors (mobile phone network) and relayed to the central office. The result is that the meter readers that are left here in Marin are required to work mandatory overtime, doubling up their routes and workload.
I wonder what would happen if these stretched thin meter readers that are left went on strike or quit ? They might have to bring back William Deveraux to read meters, the job pays $29 per hour plus full benefits, so Ralph might just do it, it’s better than being unemployed.

“A New York utility spokesman tells CNN, “We are not going to manufacture this car without a seat belt,” but ignoring the auto industry’s record, there’s currently no privacy guarantees for the millions of smart meters being installed in California.”

In the video they say that an attacker could use his “Hacked” 100’s of meters access to jack electricity demand up and down so dramatically that it could destabilize the local electric grid and take out power to potentially a large metropolitan area.

Experts say that such a regional blackout would most certainly cascade to other systems, knocking them out too.

turn.org/article.php?id=1091

And the power company knew this way back then and is still installing these?

criminal negligence – “recklessly acting without reasonable caution and putting another person at risk of injury”

What about putting a whole city at “risk” ? KNOWINGLY ?

CEOs of power companies are not immune.

I see no way that these “smart” meters can be SAFELY installed in mass quantities in ANY city anywhere. This has to STOP!

This is more dangerous than you think!