Smart Meters
In the middle of 2010, PG&E rolled out new electronic meters that replaced traditional analog electric meters. Customers whose meters were replaced with Smart Meters reported seeing their energy bills spike up multiple-folds and accused the company of deliberately inflating their bills, along with questioning the accuracy of the meters. Complaints of PG&E's failing to honor customer's refusal of upgrading their meters also surfaced. Although the contractor that installed the meters would honor these requests, PG&E would eventually come out and replace them despite objections. Subsequently, the California Public Utilities Commission would conduct an investigation and find that of the 613 Smart Meter field tests, 611 meters were successfully tested and 100% passed Average Registration Accuracy. One meter was found to have serious errors and was malfunctioning on arrival, while another was found to have serious event errors upon installation. These meters were therefore excluded from testing.
Read more about this topic: Pacific Gas And Electric Company, Controversies
Famous quotes containing the words smart and/or meters:
“Some smart man once said that on the most exalted throne in the world we are seated on nothing but our own arse.”
—Wendell Mayes, U.S. screenwriter. Otto Preminger. CINCPAC II (Henry Fonda)
“In our Mechanics’ Fair, there must be not only bridges, ploughs, carpenter’s planes, and baking troughs, but also some few finer instruments,—rain-gauges, thermometers, and telescopes; and in society, besides farmers, sailors, and weavers, there must be a few persons of purer fire kept specially as gauges and meters of character; persons of a fine, detecting instinct, who note the smallest accumulations of wit and feeling in the bystander.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)