Concerns about SmartMeters

Last week's Argus had a story about new PG&E gas and electric meters that will send data directly to the company and will no longer require employees to go to every home and business to read each meter separately.

This is another step forward in efficiency, but might present other concerns in the future. As an aside, there go several more jobs, the victims of technology. You can almost relate efficiency in the workplace to job elimination.

One of the concerns coming over the horizon is that this will allow energy use to be monitored and recorded instantly. This, in turn, will allow identification of peak period and off period use of gas and electricity. The next step will be the ability to price the use of these utilities by “time-of-day” use.

For example, in the summer when air conditioning is heavily used, PG&E will have the ability to, in the name of efficiency, increase the unit cost during certain hours. Increased cost per energy unit will encourage some to be more conservative in their use of electricity. This isn't a bad idea, depending on how it's implemented.

How will those on fixed incomes come out? Will retirees who are home during the day and have more need for air conditioning suddenly find their bills much higher?

How will other use/cost relationships be changed?

It's something to think about.

Another focus of the article was regarding the possible effect on humans of the radio transmission energy when data is sent to the main computer. This has been a concern in many cities and may pop up in Petaluma.

I don't think it's anything to be concerned about, considering all the electronics we interact with every day. But it is a concern to some and needs to be monitored (studied) as more and more radio frequency is used to report data to central computers. This may become a much larger issue when retailers start using radio frequency tags instead of bar codes.

This leads to a local connection. The Petaluma water department is either already using or plans to use such technology to read meters and charge for water use. This will make the billing operation more efficient but will raise the question of the impact of radio frequency waves on health.

Again, I don't see any significant problems associated with this technology. However, if there is a problem with PG&E use of this technology, then perhaps the city's use should also be reviewed.

A concern I have, however, is that this technology could be used to penalize those using higher volumes of water during peak periods of water consumption.

We have already seen the city using tiered pricing to penalize those using larger than average amounts of water, without consideration of the reason. The city's adopted water policies are already deliberately skewed to penalize high-water use.

This gives me another opportunity to put in a plug for a water commission as a way to involve more citizens in water issues.

As it now stands, unless you watch the department's presentation to the council, you have no idea what city policy is.

On to another item. Fixing streets was another item covered by the Argus. While there probably isn't much that can be done to speed up street repairs in this current financial difficulty, it would be interesting to know what projects are “shovel ready” in the event more stimulus money becomes available.

Some months ago, there was talk of funds possibly being available to eliminate preferential left turn signals at most signalized intersections. What is the status of this possible grant? There must be some list available designating what the priorities are for various intersections as well as for the street repairs the city is planning around town with city funds. It would be comforting for the public to know.

(Jack Balshaw is a retired transportation planner and former Petaluma City Council member. His e-mail address is jbcolumn@sbcglobal.net. His blog is jacksblog.balshaw.com)