Are smart meters safe?

We probably haven't dedicated enough space to one of the trendiest items for politicians/business people trying to promote clean energy and energy efficiency: the smart grid and smart meters. Probably because we think they're a bit overrated, a fact we hit on in our post "Smart Grid - Who benefits most, utilities or customers". This thought was reinforced in our post "Living with a smart meter" where we chronicled Gary Hart's observations about his life with a PG&E installed smart meter.

Aside from the fact of how useful smart meters are to utility customers, what about something more important: the safety of smart meters. There is at least one smart grid safety documentary and a blog titled Stop Smart Meters that don't think they're safe.

The Electric Power Research Institute researched the safety of smart meters last year and they were pretty clear that they're evaluation found that radiation from smart meters fell well below the FCC limits on radiation:

The EPRI research addressed RF from a specific type of smart meter with measurements conducted at the manufacturer’s test facility. For a continuously-operating rack of 10 meters, each operating at a nominal power rating of 250 milliwatts (typical of many residential units), the RF power density level 1 foot in front of the rack was 8 percent of the FCC limit; at 20 and 50 feet, these values dropped to 0.18 and 0.11 percent, respectively. From 8 inches behind the rack, RF power density was 0.6 percent of the FCC limit.

Notice that their report said "8 percent of", not "8 percent over".

According to a Grist article on the safety of smart meters, the radiation from a cellphone at your ear is 1000 micro-watts/cm^2! Almost 5 times the maximum level that the Stop Smart Meter film links to in a research PDF. So why aren't these documentaries focusing on cell phones instead of smart meters? I guess all these people worried about smart meters don't use cell phones.

While I'm not sure if smart meters actually help customers save energy, I wouldn't be worried about the safety of a smart meter if I had one on my home. I'd be more worried about fossil fuel power pollution. When researching this issue for yourself, I would be wary about looking at numbers of radiation that aren't compared to other sources of radiation that we live with in our daily lives. Also, keep in mind that you should only be concerned with the radiation you would receive from a smart meter while living in your home, not 1 meter in front of the meter. How often have you stood right in front of your existing meter? What about the amount of time you spend with a cell phone inches from your brain!

What are your thoughts?

Tags:

living with smart meter

safety of smart meters

smart meters safe

Comments

ckmapawatt Mon, 02/13/2012 - 21:38

This link has PDF's of the Santa Cruz report: http://lamesa.patch.com/blog_posts/california-health-department-cites-smart-meter-health-risks-in-report

Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/14/2012 - 16:09

Why do you post essentially the same comment twice? It'd be good for you to include references to studies you cite in your comments, rather than simply making the statements (as Chris asked before). here's a direct link to the pdfs: http://sccounty01.co.santa-cruz.ca.us/bds/Govstream/BDSvData/non_legacy/agendas/2012/20120124/PDF/041.pdf It's worth reading, IMHO - more informative than blog comments. ;) and p.s. no, I'm not an "industry shill."

Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/14/2012 - 16:59

Actually RobertWilliams I don't see anything in that document which backs up your assertions. Googling some of those phrases leads only to your reposting of the same comment elsewhere. Citations, please? If you can't I'm not inclined to give those bullet items much weight. If you can, I'm interested.

Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/14/2012 - 17:09

Meh, last comment. I see that Attachment B of the PDF Chris & I pointed at contains some citations of works which refer to some of the items you mention. There are other assertions in there which aren't backed up but merely stated, such as that the smart meters run at a 100% duty cycle.

Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 02/22/2012 - 19:18

We have smart meters for both electricity and natural gas. The gas one is interesting because it can't pull power from the grid to run its radio transmitter. Instead it has to rely on internal batteries. The unit is very small, so there isn't space for more than the equivalent of a few "AA" sized batteries. These smart meters are spec'd to run for several years before needing a battery replacement - so they clearly can't be transmitting 24x7, or they'd run out of juice in a matter of days.

Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/23/2012 - 03:53

190,000 RADIATION TRANSMISSIONS PER DAY PG$E, Northern California's Utility Monopoly, recently admitted that each electric smart meter transmits radiation 10's of thousands of times, up to 190,000 times each day. This corrects previous false statements repeated often by utility companies across the country.

ckmapawatt Thu, 02/23/2012 - 07:38

Robert, if you are making these claims, PLEASE post a link validating them. Is the radiation harmful to humans? We are subject to radiation from thousands of things in our daily life. These claims are great for fear mongering, but is there any validity to them. Nobody can tell because you don't provide enough scientific background or source for your claim.

Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/23/2012 - 12:28

It seems to me that there are 2 types of people involved in this dialog about smart meters. People with science and engineering backgrounds (like me) that understand that there is very little chance of there being any reasonable concern. And the alarmists who do not have any credible science or technology knowledge that are content to repeat disinformation while refusing to learn enough about RF energy and the devices in question. Willful ignorance and paranoia do not yield credible arguments. Again I refer all readers to this excellent infographic: http://www.cmpco.com/MediaLibrary/3/6/Content%20Management/YourAccount/PDFs%20and%20Docs/RF_FactSheet_web.pdf

Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/23/2012 - 13:43

Well put, Guy! I particularly like the comment about "willful ignorance".

ckmapawatt Thu, 02/23/2012 - 17:12

Guy, great point as always. It is alarmists without science background that give all of energy topics a bad name. Of course, you can see an extravagant abundance of a lack of science background in the comments on our <a href="http://mapawatt.com/2011/11/05/hojo-motor-is-a-scam/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">HoJo motor post</a>.

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