Editor:
Re: Residents aim to take back the power, April 26.
BC Hydro’s attempts to downplay, deny or obfuscate the number of times each day we will be pinged by smart-meter radiation seems like a page right out of a California utility’s marketing handbook.
After over two years of stating that smart meters communicate 45 seconds per day, last year Pacific Gas & Electric Company was compelled to disclose that each smart meter actually transmits radiation up to 190,000 times daily.
The utility’s PR focuses on the four to six times daily that energy-usage information is transmitted, even though all the other pulses are necessary to keep the “mesh network” synced and repeating the signals from surrounding meters.
Utility reports also focus on the total time rather than number of transmissions, since thousands of energy micro-bursts add up to just seconds of total transmission time.
Though the signals are only milliseconds long, their peak radiated power is extremely strong. Various research papers show evidence that brief, high-intensity spikes can be more destructive to health than sustained transmissions.
R. J. Donnelly, Surrey
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I’d like to thank BC Hydro customers for their patience as we transition to a more modern electricity system. We’re replacing our old analog meters with new digital smart meters, which will have many benefits, such as faster power restoration when there’s an outage and new tools to help you manage your energy use.
Over the past weeks, some have asked whether a higher bill might have been caused by a new smart meter. In the overwhelming number of inquiries we’ve determined that bills are consistent with past use.
As is the case with any mass-produced electronic device, there will be a small number of meters that have components that don’t work properly. Out of more than 1.1 million meters installed to date, there have been very few meters that have had problems. The vast majority of these errors were caught by system checks and did not affect customer bills.
In future, when our smart grid is operational, we will detect many problems on our grid automatically and fix them much faster.
To learn more about the meters, visit bchydro.com/smartmeters
Donna McGeachie, BC Hydro
