Smart Meters: Some Facts
An Upper Saddle River resident has done extensive research on smart meters: 18+ hours online reading detailed papers: scientific, regulatory and health, speaking to three attorneys and to O&R. Here’s the short version, if you want to better understand the issue.
Health and safety:
EMF means ElectoMagnetic Field. In today’s world, our bodies are subject to a flood of EMF: FM radio, cell signals, cell phone, bluetooth, home wifi, cordless phones, microwaves and more. Smart meter EMF adds another level to your already-high exposure. Some studies of smart meters offer reassurance. But the method used in such studies is now being widely questioned.
Wireless signal strength decreases sharply with distance. At ten feet from your home wifi, your body will be subject to one-hundreth of what you’d get at one foot away. You can practice good “EMF hygiene” and reduce any health risk, especially for kids. You can turn off your wifi and cellphone. You can’t turn off a smart meter. If you choose to opt out of a smart meter, you’ll still get some exposure from your neighbor’s meter, but it will be a tiny fraction of what you’d get if the smart meter is in your home. Using a European standard, smart meter safe exposure starts at 45 feet away.
Dr. David Carpenter, a Harvard-trained physician and Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment says, “the informed person should demand that they be allowed to keep their analog meter.”
The technical stuff:
O&R list online the customer benefits of smart meters. O&R smart meters communicate with any smart devices in your home and also communicate with other nearby smart meters. The data from each smart meter is ‘bounced’ from one smart meter to the next until it reaches an ‘access point’ that receives the signals. These multiple smart meters form a radio frequency signal ‘mesh’. Should some homes lose power, each meter will attempt to find new routes through this mesh, bouncing signals onwards til the data from a working meter reaches an access point.
Each access point generates two signals: one to receive/transmit to the smart meters in its vicinity. The second is a cell data signal—just like your smartphone data—that goes to the O&R control center. While access points are ten times the power of a smart meter, they are located high on a utility pole, so signal strength is less of a concern—as described above, signal power drops sharply with distance. There are four access points planned for Upper Saddle River; each will “serve” about 1,000 smart meters.
According to O&R, anyone choosing to opt out will receive a digital Itron Centron meter with no communication capabilities, emitting no wireless signal. The face of the meter says in red lettering OPT OUT to ensure that crews at a later date don’t accidentally switch out the meter for a smart meter.
O&R provided details of the accuracy testing the smart meters have undergone. With 125,000 meters already installed, there is no verified case of a customer being overbilled by a smart meter. O&R were both open and responsive to the writer’s inquiry. O&R expect about a 0.3% opt-out rate; this will not materially affect the performance of the smart meter mesh.
The legal perspective:
Lawyers who have fought cell tower cases and lost believe that arguing health risk in court is not going to be successful. Also, NJ appellate courts will defer to the NJ Board of Public Utilities who gave O&R approval. The NJ Board of Public Utilities commissioners are not elected officials; they are answerable to the NJ Governor and State Senate members. So, if you want to register your objection to having smart meters in Upper Saddle River, you can:
- Submit a complaint online to NJ Board of Public Utilities
- Write to the NJ Governor
- Write to your NJ Senator and Assembly Wo/Man (District 39)