LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The chairman of the California Public Utilities Commission said Thursday he is directing Pacific Gas & Electric Co. to prepare a proposal to allow customers with concerns about wireless SmartMeters to opt out of the program.
Chairman Michael Peevey made the statement at the beginning of the CPUC's regular meeting Thursday morning in San Francisco.
The surprise announcement is the latest development in what has become a grassroots battle statewide and nationwide between consumers and utility companies moving to the wireless devices as part of the implementation of a “smart grid.”
Peevey is asking the utility to return with the proposal within two weeks.
PG&E spokesman Paul Moreno said the company is “committed to working with our regulators to meet this deadline.”
CPUC spokesman Andrew Kotch told Lake County News that as PG&E is coming up with the plan, installations will not be stopped.
“We are not calling any type of moratorium of any sort,” he said.
Moreno confirmed that PG&E will continue moving forward with the installations while finalizing the opt-out proposal for the CPUC.
Mindy Spatt, media director for The Utility Reform Network (TURN), said of the CPUC's announcement, “The devil is in the details.”
TURN has advocated against the meters primarily due to cost effectiveness, according to Spatt.
“We strongly support an opt-out, the question is, which customers will be allowed to opt out and how much will it cost?” she asked.
At the Thursday meeting, Peevey and the commission were once again confronted with numerous speakers who wanted to talk to the commission about SmartMeters and their concerns about the devices' wireless radio frequency emissions.
“I think what I have to say might calm some of the emotion around this issue,” Peevey said.
He noted that virtually every speaker who has addressed the subject with the commission has been a PG&E customer. “We have not had complaints about radio frequency emissions or other concerns about smart meters from customers of other utilities in California,” he said.
Customers in the Sacramento Municipal Utility District as well as customers of Southern California utilities have “not had any sort of customer complaints of the kind we’ve been hearing from PG&E customers,” Peevey said.
Because of what Peevey called “the continued strong interest in this issue in parts of Northern California,” he said he spoke directly to PG&E’s president to ask that the company bring back to the commission “a proposal or a series of proposals that will allow customers with an aversion to wireless devices the option of being metered without the use of wireless technology.”
He added, “In other words, I am directing PG&E to prepare a proposal for our consideration that will allow some form of opt-out for customers who object to these devices at reasonable cost, to be paid by the customers who choose to opt-out. I’ve asked to have it within two weeks.”
Peevey said he couldn't predict either how the commission would evaluate such an option, or what PG&E might propose. “But I think it’s clear the time has come for some kind of movement in the direction of customer opt-outs.”
Kotch told Lake County News in a previous interview that only the commission holds the authority to impose SmartMeter moratoriums, not local governments.
Nevertheless, Lake County became the latest in a string of more than 30 local governments around the state to take action against the meters when, on Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors approved a temporary moratorium on the installations and directed county counsel to begin exploring legal action to stop them.
County Counsel Anita Grant told Lake County News on Wednesday that her office was looking at filing a petition with the CPUC to ask for the installations to be stopped.
Moreno stated previously that PG&E didn't plan to honor Lake County's moratorium, referring to the CPUC's authority in the matter.
He said Thursday that PG&E has “been examining possible alternatives for the past few months in anticipation of such a filing.”
Moreno said the company was expecting the need for such a proposal because of Assemblyman Jared Huffman's AB 37, a bill now in the California Legislature that, if passed, would give consumers an alternative to the wireless SmartMeters.
At its meeting this week the Board of Supervisors also approved sending the Legislature, the governor and local legislators a letter in support of AB 37.
Supervisor Rob Brown said Thursday that the CPUC's call for an opt-out proposal was good news.
Brown, who raised issues over the meters based on consumers' right to choose, told PG&E representatives at Tuesday's meeting that he felt they should have backed off on installations based on customers' concerns.
Opt-out proposal applies only to PG&E
Kotch said Peevey's request for the opt-out plan is directed only at PG&E, not other utilities using the wireless SmartMeter devices.
A CPUC fact sheet on the SmartMeter program said that the commission has authorized utilities across the state to install close about 15.9 million SmartMeter devices, with PG&E having the most – five million electric meters and 4.2 million natural gas meters.
PG&E officials told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday that they have installed around eight million SmartMeters in California, beginning in 2006, and were required by the CPUC to complete the remaining installations by June 2012.
In Lake County, Moreno said the company has 40,000 analog meters to change over to SmartMeters, with 2,500 wireless meters – mostly in the Clearlake, Clearlake Oaks, Lower Lake and Hidden Valley Lake areas – having been installed since the local SmartMeter rollout began the last week of February.
PG&E's Wellington Energy contractors continued attempting to install meters on Wednesday and Thursday in Lake County, according to reports from area residents.
On Thursday, Brown said he was alerted to an installer in the Kelseyville area on Thursday morning, and he followed her on her route, stopping at the homes where she was attempting to make the installations to inform people of the moratorium.
He said several people asked the contractor to not install the meters, and she complied and left their property.
Kotch said the opt-out proposal likely won't be on the commission's March 24 agenda. He said a 30-day review period on the PG&E proposal would be required before the CPUC could consider approving it.
Some of the pushback PG&E is getting may be the result of not communicating the SmartMeter program in the beginning.
A report on the SmartMeter program conducted by the Structure Group, at the CPUC's direction, found that PG&E didn't do a good job of explaining the program to its customers, which PG&E officials have acknowledged was an issue.
Moreno said PG&E understands that its customers have concerns about radio frequencies emitted from SmartMeters, although he said the “great weight” in scientific evidence demonstrates that the devices are safe.
“We take our customers' concerns seriously,” he said.
Because of those concerns, Moreno said the company is evaluating options that it hopes will alleviate the concerns “and still enable PG&E to upgrade all of its customers to SmartMeters.”
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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