[ACC Arizona Corporation Commission – APS Arizona Public Service Electric Company – BC Hydro Site C – Christy Clark – Elster – FortisBC – Landis+Gyr – Navopache Electric Coop Smart Meter Replacements – RUCO – US Congress Testimony Smart Meters Life Span – Warren Woodward | BC – Arizona & New Mexico, USA] & (videos)
1) Not smeter or RF: More of our money wasted by BC Hydro and Christy Clark. Regardless of party affiliation, this is important information that I believe we should all present to the candidates asking for our votes. We can’t afford Site C and it seems from much independent study, including the initial panel’s whose recommendations were ignored, we don’t need it. Granted much of the damage has been done already to the area and can’t be “undone”, but more damage done by flooding can be prevented, as well as the drainage of our tax dollars to the corporations.
(click on photos to enlarge)
2) See below in Letters an email I received about a small utility in Arizona replacing all of its smeters. With the short lifespan, I bet BC Hydro is beginning to replace its meters and we’ll never know. We too have been told by BC Hydro and FortisBC that the smeters will last 20 years and try to make it sound as if that is how long the analogs last. Total misrepresentation.
Letters:
Epic Fail! – Navopache Electric Coop Replacing All 40,000 “Smart” Meters After Just a Few Years
Information & Perspective by X
Sedona, Arizona ~ April 20, 2017
Yesterday I received news that Navopache Electric Coop, a utility that serves customers in the White Mountains of eastern Arizona and western New Mexico, is replacing all of its Elster brand “smart” meters with Landis & Gyr “smart” meters.
Upon hearing the news, I phoned Navopache. The person I spoke with said initially that Navopache was “upgrading” their meters and replacing all 40,000 of them. In our subsequent conversation, she said the Elster meters had “bugs” and communication problems. She also said the Elsters were only about 3 years old.
What a colossal waste! If Navopache had stuck with analog meters, those much less expensive and reliable analog meters would still be in service today, tomorrow and for decades to come.
This Navopache news has relevance to the current APS rate case because a fraudulent 20 year “smart” meter service life is being proposed by APS, ACC Staff and the Residential Utility Consumer Office (RUCO). RUCO, by the way, is supposed to represent residential customers in the rate case but in reality represents no one but RUCO. (To see how badly RUCO has lied and sold us out in the APS rate case in order to further RUCO’s elitist, social engineering agenda, see pages 9 to 15 of my testimony here: http://docket.images.azcc.gov/0000179034.pdf . ACC Staff’s lies are detailed at pages 3 to 9.)
Because I am an Intervenor in the APS rate case, I get to do discovery. I get to ask APS questions. Via discovery, I found that APS’s Elster meters are lasting about as long as Navopache’s. From my testimony:
At APS’s Response to Woodward’s data request 2.12, APS admits thousands of meters failed to communicate and, after an average life of just 4 years, were replaced as follows:
2014 – 19,203 meters replaced
2015 – 22,287 meters replaced
2016 (as of 10/2016) – 20,172 meters replaced
This failure to communicate is a problem that is ongoing. APS: “This specific communication issue was first identified in 2014 and continues to be an issue today, albeit a minimal one.” Some 20,000 meters failing every year is a “minimal issue?”
I guess when you have lax regulators along with a monopoly on 1.25 million customers like APS does, then the ongoing waste of 20,000 failed “smart” meters per year is nothing to worry about. However, when you have only 40,000 meters to begin with like Navopache does, a failure rate like APS’s wipes out your entire meter stock quickly.
What’s amazing is how Navopache didn’t learn a thing from the epic failure, but instead Navopache is just replacing one brand with another. What was that definition of insanity most of us have heard, doing the same thing and expecting a different result?
“Smart” meters simply do not last. Because actual metering is only one fifth of what a “smart” meter does, the I.R.S. classifies them as a computer with only a 6 year life. Indeed, a utility executive testifying before the U.S. Congress said they only last 5 to 7 years. You can read about that as well as details of tens of thousands of other APS “smart” meter failures, as well as the 140,000 that went obsolete after less than 10 years, at pages 40 to 46 of this testimony: http://docket.images.azcc.gov/0000178628.pdf .
Undaunted, and as such reminding me very much of the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Navopache claims at its website (and in ALL CAPS to make certain we are persuaded) that “smart” meters offer “improved EFFICIENCY,” “improved RELIABILITY,” and “improved AFFORDABILITY.” Sure. Except when they don’t.
By the way, this is the same Navopache Electric Coop that said their “smart” meters transmit only once every four hours. Navopache Caught Lying is a YouTube I did 3 years ago of a Navopache “smart” meter shortly after it was installed. I guess no one told it that it was only supposed to transmit once every four hours because, like utility lying about “smart” meters, it never stops.
[https://smartgridawareness.org/2015/10/29/smart-meters-have-life-of-5-to-7-years/]
Sharon Noble
Director, Coalition to Stop Smart Meters
“Our Society is run by insane people for insane objectives. We are being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that.
That’s what is insane about it…”
~ John Lennon