1) A webinar is available for free for 24 hrs about Alzheimers.  Olle Johansson is speaking on Thursday. “Wireless Technolgy. A threat to brain function.”  You have to register in advance.

The Alzheimer’s & Dementia Summit starts on Monday.
I want to make sure you’re ready!

• LAST CHANCE to purchase the talks at pre-event sale prices!
• LAST CHANCE to enter the pre-event giveaway!
• Click here to view the daily schedule and plan your week!

DAILY PRESENTATIONS
Each day’s talks will be available for free on demand for a 24-hour period. They begin at 10:00 A.M. U.S. Eastern (New York time) and end the next day at 9:59 A.M. Once a 24-hour period has ended, those talks are only available by purchasing them!

I’ve put a countdown clock on each day’s page so you know how much time you have left to watch those talks!

USE THIS LINK TO ACCESS EACH DAY’S TALKS
(clear your browser history each day to see the new talks):
http://alzheimersdementiasummit.com/event

2) Yet another report about BC Hydro’s bad and wasteful management. Selling power at 10-50% of domestic rates to the USA and other provinces, and using phoney estimates to justify Site C. Demand has been flat for 10 years – and probably will continue to drop, causing rates to increase, causing usage to drop, etc. The death spiral….

“The report said that domestic revenue before regulatory transfers was lower than planned “due to lower domestic loads resulting from the loss of large industrial load related to declining market conditions including low commodity prices, and a warmer than normal winter.”

The result was the annual load being 3,351 gigawatt hours (GWh) below plan, excluding surplus sales. To put that in perspective, BC Hydro expects that the Site C dam, by the time it is built in 2024, would produce 5,100 GWh a year.

“The energy that would have gone to serving load will be sold to the market, at prices that are between 10% and 50% of what would have been received had it been sold to domestic customers,” the report said.

“This shows that BC Hydro estimates of domestic demand (40% over 20 years but flat over the past 10) are exaggerated and have led to bad decisions,” Dix said. “We are building Site C to subsidize Washington and Alberta businesses and consumers.”

https://www.biv.com/article/2016/7/hydro-revenue-down-drop-domestic-power-demand/

3) Several of you have sent me copies of an article written by Tom Fletcher in the local Black “newspaper”, encouraging me to respond. I have written a letter and it is below. Please, send it to the editor of your local newspaper, and give him/her my email address as a contact in case they wish to print it.

4) Segment #14 of the BCUC response pertains to BC Hydro’s and FortisBC’s “incidents” during and post installation. NOTE  that under Table 3, BC Hydro says the information about $$meter repairs is “anecdotal”, meaning it isn’t based on facts.  BC Hydro admits that it DOES NOT TRACK AFTER-INSTALLATION INCIDENTS.   How can it claim that there have been no fires if I am the only one tracking them?

FortisBC’s repair rate is 4 times that of BC Hydro because it is checking for damaged sockets with a tool that BC Hydro did not use – a hot socket gap indicator. BC Hydro was careless, resulting in damages both during installations and after. Homes could have damaged sockets that have yet to cause problems.

Letters:

From a member in response to Tom Fletcher’s article: http://www.agassizharrisonobserver.com/news/386708081.html

“I am attaching the letter I will take to the Agassiz Observer office on Monday and tell the editor that if Tom Fletcher can put wrong information in our paper then I have the right to correct him. I did use a lot of your comments from the blog as I could not have said it better than you did.”

= = =

With respect to Tom Fletcher’s opinion piece on the class action suit brought against BC Hydro not being approved by Judge Adair.  Judge Adair’s decision not to certify the class action suit brings forth the fact that the foundational argument of the case survived the attack by BC Hydro.  The court found merit and plausibility in the success of a cause of action which embodied the Charter of Rights, Section 7 Liberty Interest. In short, the court recognized the right to be free from government interference regarding choices of a fundamental and personal nature within one’s home was a valid argument. Now that’s a success that we would not have achieved without this class action application.

The court’s recognition of the Section 7 Liberty Interest, as it relates to forced smart meter application and unacceptable microwave radiation emissions exposure there from, is a major development and a big step up the stairway to success.

It is important to note that the decision did not assert that the microwave radiation emissions from smart meters is safe, Tom you got it wrong there, and because the Notice of Civil Claim against BC Hydro was filed in 2013, recent and even more credible science is reporting the possibility of devastating ill health effects from wireless exposure. Such articles, which would have further supported health concerns, were released after the court had closed submissions. We could have really put forth a better case if the recent science had been able to be used. The latest being the US National Toxicology Program science article on brain and heart cancers from two years intermittent “cell phone” exposure. (http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/05/26/055699).

I feel that Tom was rude in saying that Sharon Noble was a protestor when she is a lot more than that. She is the Director for the Coalition to Stop Smart Meters here in BC. A group I proudly say I am a member of. Nomi Davis is not just a yoga instructor but an extremely successful business woman.

X

____________________________________________________________________

From: Dennis and Sharon Noble [mailto:dsnoble@shaw.ca]
Sent: July 23, 2016
To: ‘editor@goldstreamgazette.com’ <editor@goldstreamgazette.com>
Cc: ‘webeditor@blackpress.com’ <webeditor@blackpress.com>
Subject: Re. Class action lawsuit fails on B.C. smart meter issue

Editor, Goldstream Gazette

Re. Class action lawsuit fails on B.C. smart meter issue

After all the years of reading Tom Fletcher’s attacks, diatribes and clearly biased articles about smart meters and our resistance to this mandatory program, it was odd to read one that had even a modicum of truth in it.  What wasn’t unexpected was he missed the entire point of the class action and the most important part of Judge Adair’s decision.

Significantly the judge found that the foundational argument of the case survived the vociferous attack by BC Hydro, and found merit and plausibility of the cause of action which embodied the Charter of Rights, Section 7 Liberty of Interest. In short, the court recognized that the right to be free from government interference regarding choices of a fundamental and personal nature within one’s home was a valid argument. That is a major success that all British Columbians should celebrate. It is a major step in our fight for our right as it pertains to forced smart meter application and unacceptable microwave radiation emissions.

It is always confusing to see anyone gleeful when our rights are trampled by the government. We should all be distressed that we must fight for them in court. When the government decides unilaterally to disregard personal choice as this government did by mandating the installation of smart meters on every home, when our personal refuges, our homes are invaded by something about which many intelligent, well-informed individuals have concerns, we should all be very worried.

The tens of thousands of people who have refused having the smart meter, who have fought for their Charter Right to protect their homes and their families, should be thanked. They have fought not just for themselves but for every British Columbian, and they will continue to fight. Allowing the corporations and government to deny our basic fundamental right sets a dangerous precedent.

Sincerely,
Sharon Noble
Director, Coalition to Stop Smart Meters
dsnoble@shaw.ca

________________________________________________________________________

RESPONSE TO “BCUC’s Staff Report on Smart Meter Fire Safety Concerns”   Segment #14

KEY:  Highlighted text is from Sharon Noble   Non-highlighted text is the draft report as written by BCUC staff.

= = =

Meter Related Incident Reporting for BC

BC Hydro and FortisBC were requested to provide certain information related to the electrical incidents during and post implementation of their meter replacement programs. The sections below summarize and discuss those results.

Meter Socket Repair Frequency

Meter socket repair frequency numbers need to be viewed with caution as they may be recorded inconsistently. A repair may be as simple as tightening an electrical connector, replacing a jaw or replacing the whole meter socket. A description of meter socket issues is provided in Appendix A.

Table 3: BC Hydro Socket Repairs (no hot socket gap indicator16)

Legacy Meters		Smart Meter
Meter socket repairs for 54,640 installs	Rate per million installs	Meter socket repairs for 124,409 installs	Rate per million installs
35*	1,000	2,483	1,300

* Anecdotal estimate of annual numbers from Field Metering managers.

Given that the frequency of meter sockets repairs is not recorded consistently, the statistics in Table 3 are meaningless.

13 Home Electric Fires, National Fire Protection Association, 2013.

14 Electric Power Annual 2013, U.S. energy Information Administration, Table 10.10.

  15 Home Structure Fires Involving Electrical Distribution or Lighting Equipment, National Fire Protection Association, 2008.

  16 TESCO, a private company providing electric meter testing equipment and metering accessories, developed a Hot Socket Gap Indicator which is used to determine if a meter socket jaw has become worn-out and unsafe for continued use. The Hot Socket Gap Indicator determines unsafe holding force on meter socket jaws. The Hot Socket Gap Indicator was developed as a result of research on detecting hot sockets focused during the installation process.

BC Hydro reports a similar frequency of meter socket repair prior to and during their smart meter program.  Comment: This BCUC report states that BC Hydro is not tracking the after-installation incidents, so BC Hydro/BCUC are not aware of the scale of the problem, nor is it able, or willing to share data with users such as IBEW, Homeowners, and the BCSA.  BC Hydro relied on contract installers and its electricians to assess the meter base condition and determine repairs and did not utilize any special tools like the hot socket gap indicator.

Please explain why “anecdotal estimates are given any credence and how they can be used as the basis for any comparison.

Table 4: FortisBC Socket Repairs (hot socket gap tester used on most installs but not in Trail)

Legacy Meters		Smart Meter
Meter socket repairs for 54,640 installs	Rate per million installs	Meter socket repairs for 124,409 installs	Rate per million installs
13*	240	768	6,200

* Actual numbers for 2006 through 2011

Comment: Please explain why the numbers “54,640” and “124,409” appear in both of the BC Hydro and the FortisBC Tables? If a sample selection was made, how were the incidents in each of these 54,640 samples chosen? Was the sampling done based on geography or time-based, or other factors?

Prior to the AMI project, FortisBC’s meter socket recorded repair rate was approximately 4 times less than BC Hydro’s rate. Please explain why.  During the AMI project FortisBC’s frequency of repairing meter sockets increased to approximately 27 times the prior rate. FortisBC attributes this increased meter socket repair to the use of the hot socket gap indicator tool in conjunction with a “conservative approach.” FortisBC described the hot socket gap indicator as helping to identify potential meter base problems by

9)    Mechanical test of the tension on each of the base socket jaws,
10)    Additional time inspecting the jaws using the tool
11)    Exposing cracks in the meter base insulating block (that holds the jaws).

During the AMI project, FortisBC repaired meter sockets at nearly 5 times the rate of BC Hydro.

• These numbers indicate that BC Hydro was careless, resulting in many more incidents than FortisBC.

• In one incident which was included in BCSA’s annual report for 2012,  during live exchange, the meter and meter base were damaged. The Corix installer volunteered that he/she had received only 8 hours training.

• During FortisBC’s hearing before the BCUC, the issue involving BC Hydro’s use of inadequately trained contract help was raised.  This may have resulted in more careful installations and the significantly higher rate of repairs being made.

Comment: The use of the “hot socket gap indicator” or HSGI occurred in the USA over several years and with FortisBC. A question then arises as to why BC Hydro did not apply the same diligence to its operations? What steps does BC Hydro need to take for its ongoing operations?

 

 

Sharon Noble
Director, Coalition to Stop Smart Meters

“You will observe with concern how long a useful truth may be known, and exist, before it is generally received and acted on.”
~  Ben Franklin