The campaign against smart meters is full of technical rubbish and half-truths. This is fomented by unions who will do anything to retain expensive useless meter readers and preys on the gullible.
Hydro does have problems, but every unbiased, informed observer has found the meter program makes sense.
The first argument tried was to claim they are unsafe and irradiate people, which is provable scientific nonsense.
Look up “inverse square law” which says, roughly translated, that if you compare a hand-held cellphone about a centimetre from your brain, to the radiation only a metre away, it delivers one ten-thousandth of the radiation. Smart meters will make a few very short cellphone calls a day.
Why do people pontificate on technical subjects they do not understand? I have no doubt they quote pseudo-scientific studies proving their thesis, just as do people who promote various snake oil cures.
There are in contrast, however, several properly run scientific studies on possible links between cellphones and various ailments. Not one has shown a definitive link. Claiming we should stop the smart meter program, while doing nothing about cellphone is asinine.
Some people even believe these meters allow BC Hydro to access private information such as online banking. There are no words to describe such uninformed foolishness.
The existing base of meters is aging, mechanical, out-of-date, unreliable rubbish of very suspect accuracy, which need meter readers at huge annual cost.
Currently, in the event of a power outage, BC Hydro has to wait for calls from users, which only inform about one location. Affected Smart meters by contrast instantly send out a short notification. Even opponents should be able to see this allows much quicker location and repair.
So what would opponents suggest?
Should BC Hydro keep trying to repair the current worn-out meters? Should they alternately replace them with similar, old-fashioned, labour intensive, unreliable, mechanical meters?
The idiocy of this in some ways proves, as Winston Churchill observed, that democracy is badly flawed.
Geoff Moxon
