By Emerson Draake
6/10/10
Pacific Gas & Electric's new smart meters have been disastrous. There's evidence that PG&E didn't fully test the meters before rolling out the installation for millions of customers. Ratepayers have been shocked by dramatic billing spikes after they received the new meters.Still, PG&E soldiers on, installing more and more of them.
So San Francisco's city attorney, Dennis Herrera, is petitioning the California Public Utilities Commission in the hopes of a reprieve."I'm not saying don't ever do smart meters," Herrera told us. "But we need to have greater confidence that these meters are accurate before installing the next 3.9 million."Fair enough.
The commission is already conducting its own independent investigation of the meters. PG&E needs to wait at least until the investigation is finished before installing more. Should the investigation find that the problems with the meters are as widespread as consumers believe, then it's PG&E's responsibility to fix those problems before forcing more customers to use the devices.
Herrera has filed the first formal petition, but we urge other city attorneys to follow suit. Until we know for sure that the meters can do the job accurately, the only smart thing to do is wait.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/21/EDT01E1BHN.DTL
