| | | 
| Are Smart Grid Ambassadors really informed about smart meters?
| | Recently, one of Naperville's long time residents spoke in front of our city council regarding the NSGI. He is one of the city-trained Smart Grid Ambassadors and gave a cheer-leader type speech aimed not at the council , but at the community. His speech can be seen here. It was also reprinted in The Sun on August 28.
One Naperville's residents with a specific educational background in power and former employee of ComEd and the Department of Energy had this to say in response:
Mr. Schlabach's letter to the Editor of August 28 merits a response. Unfortunately I am not a "trained NSGI Ambassador." My training merely includes having a BSEE from the U of I Urbana -Champaign, where I majored in power. I also was an employee of Commonwealth Edison and the US Department of Energy. By the time I got to Naperville in 1967, the town already had 35,000 people in it, so Mr. Schlabach (who remembers 22,000) has me there, too.
Mr. Schlabach asserts that we are the only city in Illinois "to reach this level of know how with our own electric and water utility service group." The City of Naperville is not superior in this respect; it is merely unusual. The City of Naperville runs its own electric and water utilities. This does not make them particularly good at it. I doubt that they have the same collective level of expertise as Commonwealth Edison, which services most of the rest of Northern Illinois, and whose service area surrounds Naperville on all sides. Before they got someone else to pay for it, Com Ed was against the Smart Grid; the CEO of their parent, Exelon, said that they couldn't figure out how to make it pay for itself. Now, they're all for it. Attorney General Lisa Madigan says it's a scam.
Mr. Schlabach says that the Naperville Smart Grid Initiative won't raise your electric bills. That's pretty funny. The City had to take out a set of municipal bonds to pay for their $11M share of this. Someone has to pay the $900K/yr. debt service, which will hit Naperville taxpayers every year for the next 18 - 3 years after the smart meters it purchased are consigned to a landfill. If the City doesn't raise your electric bills to pay for this, they will raise your property taxes. In fact, they have already promised to do so - it's in the bond instruments. And they did it without asking you.
But, in fact, the smart meters will permit the City to raise your electric bills in ways most of you have not even dreamt of. Because of the uproar it will cause, they aren't doing it right away, but sooner or later Naperville will introduce time-of-use billing and peak power billing. A kilowatt-hour of electricity consumed by a ratepayer at 4pm in August is going to cost many times what that kwh will cost on a mild spring evening. I guarantee you: your rates are going UP, and your electric bill, to quote a famous national politician, will "skyrocket." And, if you don't pay the bill, the new smart meters will also enable the City to cut you off. They won't even have to visit your house to do it. Or, if you use too much peak power, the smart meter will cut you off anyway, wait for a "penalty period", and then switch the power back on - all without the intercession of any City employee.
Mr. Schlabach states that the NSGI "pav[es] the way for new technology, like electric cars and alternative energy sources", and will make our electric service "even more reliable." Widespread adoption of electric vehicles will cause total energy consumption to dramatically increase (it's about like adding an air conditioner to your house), but I have yet to figure out why that has anything to do with a smart meter. The E Vs will be plugged in at night, when load will be low; there won't be any time-of-use load shifting based on them. Nor will smart meters make "alternative energy sources" any less expensive than they are now. The generation costs of wind and solar are outrageously high, many times that of a base-line coal-fired or nuclear power plant, aren't available when the electricity is needed, and won't be replacing any large component of our generation capacity for decades, if ever. Mr. Schlabach points out that the smart meters can be used to report outages. Let me introduce Mr. Schlabach to another revolutionary electronic technology that does the same thing: the cell phone.
NSGI won't pay for itself, but that's not why the DOE awarded the grant. It's a portion of the Obama jobs stimulus program. It's a make-work boondoggle. Certain financially interested parties already have made millions on it. It's too bad that it has turned the rest of us into chumbolones, and it's most unfortunate that our city leadership either doesn't know, or doesn't care.
Jeff Perkins
For further observations on Chuck's speech go to citycouncilwatchdog.com
Be smart, be informed, be moved to action: Tell the city to stop the install of smart meters in Naperville. Sign the Petition |
|
| Sign the Petition
| | Tell the city to stop the install of smart meters in Naperville. Sign the Petition
|
| | Naperville Smart Meter Awareness is a group of concerned citizens educating the public about the risks of wireless smart meters. We are comprised of lawyers, technology professionals, health advocates, accountants, business owners and parents in our community. Smart meters are to be installed in Naperville starting this summer and pose risks in the areas of privacy, costs, security, and health. Our mission is to educate the residents of Naperville by bringing all pertinent information to the public and in doing so, advocate for a smarter solution in Naperville. |
| |
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home