By Norm Hutton I would appreciate that the readers of this article use their mathematical skills to solve some of the following statements purported to be true.
The statements were provided in an information bulletin from BC Hydro, dated August 24, 2014, called “BC Hydro’s new meters making electricity grid safer for customers.”
Itron is the manufacturer of smart meters. The meters are designed, manufactured and tested at the same facility in the United States that supplied BC Hydro with legacy digital meters for nearly a decade. This same facility also supplied BC Hydro with analog meters since the 1960s. Itron technology and services company did not exist before the year 1977. Do the math.
The bulletin states: “Just like an electrical socket, a properly functioning meter socket should be able to accommodate frequent meter exchanges. The exchange process is similar to unplugging and then plugging in an appliance.”
How frequently should these smart meters be exchanged? Are they that unreliable?
How does a person plug in the load side first on an appliance three-pronged plug? This, of course, is an engineering question.
Many of these meters have been exchanged “under load.” It is only a matter of time before they break down the meter base connections.
Gary Murphy is the expert from the United States brought in by BC Hydro to run the smart meter program on or about the year 2010 and, yes, he is well paid.
“Mr. Murphy is someone who is highly qualified to do work that most people can’t do,”
said energy minister Bill Bennett in The Province, July 3, 2014, noting Murphy has 20 years’ experience building electrical smart grids.
The earliest deployments of smart grids include the one in Italy (2005), one in Texas (2003) and one in Colorado (2008). How did Murphy get his 20 years’ experience in building electrical smart grids in under seven years? Do the math.
When Coquitlam Now asked about a house fire in 2012, the $265-per-hour Murphy said: “Our current review strongly suggests that it was an overloaded service at the customer’s house and was in fact unrelated to the meter and the meter exchange process.”
“Our current review strongly suggests...” statement is not very comforting to all the people who have smart meters on their homes. Does this statement indicate the main breaker was faulty? We, the customers, have main breakers as well as many other circuit breakers on our service panels (also known as load centres). We depend on them for our safety. They do not allow overloads and short circuits. The main breaker trips on excessive overloads and other major electrical faults.
“We’re still doing our due-diligence and will let the customer know that there could be an unsafe condition that is causing his service to be overloaded.”
The due diligence appears to have been not in use in regard to the above fire, and in the previous five on file with BC Hydro. There are also 20 reported “installation” problems on its files. Other incidents of this nature don’t appear to be recorded by BC Hydro.
BC Hydro said that there has been no evidence of fires started by smart meters. Bennett said he is not aware of any problems with the (smart) meters. Why is it I knew of problems with smart meters before BC Hydro and Bennett did?
Norm Hutton is a retired journeyman electrician. He is a member of the class action suit in regard to the stop smart meter program.
