Despite government plans to spend £11.7 billion folling out smart meters to every home and office in the UK, the project’s cost may over-run, and it may fail to deliver the expected benefits, an influential committee has warned.
The Public Accounts Committee of MPs, which scrutinises publis spending, will praise the plans, but will also warn that the government mneeds to provide fuirther evidence that smart meters will really bring benefits to householders and business owners.
“Consumers will benefit from smart meters only if they understand the opportunity to reduce their energy bills and change their behaviour,” said Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts. “So far the evidence on whether they will do so has been inconclusive. Otherwise, the only people who will benefit are the energy suppliers.”
Hodge warned that a lack of public confidence in the energy suppliers who will carry out the project, could also harm its prospects, with no system in place to ensure that the savings made by suppliers will be passed on to the customer.
“The government is relying on competition in the market to drive down prices,” she added. “But, as has been previously reported by Ofgem, the energy market does not currently operate as an effective competitive market.”
The report says that the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) should instigate an effective communications programme to promote the meters’ benefits and ensure that people are using them to reduce their energy usage. It adds that the DECC should also conduct trials to identify the risks of such an expensive and ambitious project.
Finally, Hodge warns thate there is a possibility that some poorer households could find that the cost of installing the meters outweighs the potential savings to be made through their use.
“The department should set out how it intends to ensure vulnerable and low income consumers do not miss out on the benefits from smart metering,” she said.
The government first outlined its plans for the project in July 2010, with analysts predicting that the adoption of smart meters in Europe would reach 52 percent by 2016 as households seek to reduce their demand for energy in the face of increasing costs.
However, there have been claims that these smart meters could be successfully attacked by hackers and that the government and the industry had rushed to develop the technology without considering all of the possible security issues.
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SMART OR STUPID
Scientists studied the wireless radiation emitted by smart meters and observed that rats became sterile after a number of generations.
Is this for greed by the utility companies or is it really to reduce human population?
SMART METER PRIVACY VIOLATIONS.
1. Must-See 4-minute youtube video on Smart meters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8JNFr_j6kdI
SMART METER HEALTH PROBLEMS AND CANCER.
2. The WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION May 31 2011 placed the Non-ionizing radiation coming from Wireless smart meters (& some other wireless devices) on the Class 2-B Carcinogen List.
http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2011/pdfs/pr208_E.pdf
3. The NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF HEALTH Feb 2011 found biological changes in the brain after only minutes of exposure to non-ionizing radiation.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/305/8/808.abstract
4. LABORATORY SCIENTISTS have observed
(1) Human Cell Damage
(2) DNA Chain Breaks
(3) Breaches in the Blood-Brain Barrier
from levels of non-ionizing radiation lower than emitted by WIRELESS Smart meters.
http://electromagnetichealth.org/electromagnetic-health-blog/cc-video/
5. INSURANCE COMPANIES won’t insure smart meters due to biological damage seen by scientists they hired. TV Video (3 minutes)
http://eon3emfblog.net/?p=382
Cell Phone use and other devices are Voluntary and can be shut off at the user’s discretion, but Smart meters mounted on homes are emitting radiation 24/7 and can not be shut off.
6. WIRELESS SMART METERS – 100 TIMES MORE RADIATION THAN CELL PHONES. Video Interview: Nuclear Scientist, Daniel Hirsch, (5 minutes)
http://stopsmartmeters.org/2011/04/20/daniel-hirsch-on-ccsts-fuzzy-math/
7. WIRELESS SMART METERS – CANCER, NERVOUS SYSTEM DAMAGE, ADVERSE REPRODUCTION AFFECTS. Video Interview: Dr. Carpenter, New York Public Health Department, Dean of Public Health, (2 minutes)
http://emfsafetynetwork.org/?p=3946
PG$E, California’s Utility Monopoly, recently admitted that each smart meter transmits radiation between 10,000 & 190,000 times each day.
This corrects previous false statements repeated often by utility companies across the country.
NOTE: many of the tests on non-ionizing radiation (the type of radiation emitted by smart meters) have been done using devices other than smart meters because smart meters have only been in people’s homes for a very short time.
But as a Wireless smart meter emits 100 times more radiation than a cell phone, it is not difficult to project. If a machine gun (smart meter) fires 100 bullets in the same time that a pistol (cell phone) fires one bullet, it is not difficult to project the harm that the machine gun can do, even if the tests were done with the pistol.
CUSTOMER UTILITY BILLS AFTER SMART METERS INSTALLED.
8. Skyrocketing Utility Bills after installation
TV News Video (3 minutes)
http://www.bakersfieldnow.com/news/63581287.html?tab=video
NATIONAL SECURITY RISKS DUE TO SMART METERS.
9. CIA Director James Woolsey calls Smart grid “Stupid” due to National Security problems caused by so-called smart meters.
News Video (1 minute)
http://www.energynow.com/video/2011/08/10/preview-mix-james-woolsey
Hi on the 23 october 2011 British gas fitted a smart gas and electric meter to my home approx 3 days later my gas boiler went down , i called out my gas safe fitter who has looked after and serviced the boiler since we have lived at the house ( this is the only gas appliance in the house ) He checked through the boiler and told there was no gas getting to the burner and it needed a new gas control valve, 2 days later after much searching he came back and told me he could not get a valve the boiler was now to old, I then asked 2 further fitters to check the boiler and they both arrived at the same diagnosis , I then got three quotes for a new boiler , New boiler fitted at a cost of £1,800 on completing the job the gas fitter tried to test the new boiler and said it would not start ,tested it through and said no gas at the boiler then went to the meter and came back and asked me how long we had the new meter i told him it had been fitted by british gsa recently he then told me they had set it up wrong and it had shut down my gas supply he then told me how to reset the meter and that was probably the problem all along i probably did not need a new boiler ,Approx 3 days later the boiler shut down again i checked the meter and found it had cut my gas of again ,I Then called british gas out there fitter told me the problem was the electricity meter and changed it 2 more meters later he admitted defeat and called his office only by chance i was standing next to him and overheard the conversation and heard the person on the other end give a post code which was not my post code it was for a property in Eastbourne i live in Hailsham when i pointed this out he said they had put the wrong code in the meter my meter was trying to get information from a meter in Eastbourne, Incompetent or what are we going to trust these people with this kind of information when they cant even match the correct post code to the right house, All british gas want to do is blame the three fitters for the problem they did not fit the meters,not even a written apology from british gas just trying to blame someone else for there incompetence in the mean time i have paid out £1,800 for a boiler i did not need. Thanks for the chance to air my disgust at british gas
I think the Energy companies are making enough profit (billions) to pay for this themselves as and when they replace meters over the next twenty years. The question has to be "why should the taxpayers pay for this" and also why is Cameron so keen to hand over nearly £12 billion to a select group of PRIVATE companies? Kickback comes to mind or maybe the promise of jobs when they quit being an MP.