PG&E's 'smart meters' make dumb mistakes
Liz Keogh

Sunday, October 25, 2009

During the summer, complaints from PG&E customers in Bakersfield about outrageously high electric bills grew from a rivulet to a roaring stream, culminating in a town hall meeting held by state Sen. Dean Florez, D-Shafter (Kern County), on Oct. 5. Customers whose bills have doubled and tripled said it was the fault of the recently installed "smart meters." Pacific Gas and Electric Co. said no, it was due to rate increases and their own high usage.

Since July 1983, I have kept a record of my monthly usage and costs for both electricity and gas. My July, August and September 2009 bills showed the highest usage and cost in 26-plus years, even though I rarely go over "baseline usage." The dollar difference from 2008 to 2009 was $20 to $30 each month. Billing costs are a product of usage multiplied by kilowatt-hour rates, which, like the federal income tax structure, is "tiered," so that the more you use, the more you pay - and at higher and higher rates. Analysis of usage is the first step toward understanding fluctuations in cost.

According to the smart meter installed on Sept. 12, 2007, the increase in my 2008-09 usage over 2007 was:

 2008 2009
May +5.6% +28.6%
June +7.5% +32.6%
July +10% +50.2%
Aug. +3.1% +41.1%
Sept. -4.8% +67.9%
Oct. +4.9% NA
  

PG&E's own data show there was not a significant difference in temperatures for each comparable month. Why, then, did my "usage" increase range from 30 percent to 70 percent in 2009, while the 2008 increases were no more than 10 percent?

Simple answer: Meter malfunctioning, whether accidental and idiosyncratic, or, as some claim, intentional.

PG&E estimates that the "average" customer in the Bakersfield area uses 920 kilowatt-hours in a 30-day month. Because of the "tiered" rate structure, that customer paid $130.41 before the March rate increase and $132.61 this summer, an increase of $2.20. But with a faulty meter over-reading on the order of 50 percent, as I experienced, that customer's bill would double to $278.46, an increase of almost $150 in real money. That's why Bakersfield is up in arms and the rest of the state, on whom PG&E wants to foist these meters, should be, too.

Liz Keogh spent 14 years collecting and analyzing data at the Institute for Social Research in Ann Arbor, Mich.; she is a 26-year Bakersfield resident and a retired Kern County child protective services and welfare fraud investigator. Contact us at forum@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/25/ING71A8G7R.DTL