Flutterby™! :

Next unread comment / Catchup all unread comments User Account Info | Logout | XML/Pilot/etc versions | Long version (with comments) | Weblog archives | Site Map | | Browse Topics

2011-01-07 23:00:10.226837+00 by meuon 3 comments

Marin County Bans "Smart Meters" Probably more for the ability to detect Grow-Ops (industry term for hydroponic or indoors plant growing) and fraud from Grow-Ops more than anything related to "health effects of radiation from smart meters".

[ related topics: Bay Area ]

comments in descending chronological order (reverse):

#Comment Re: made: 2011-01-08 01:10:00.351429+00 by: meuon [edit history]

Side note; Common practice now (and we do this as well) when rolling our "smart grid" is to meter the feeders, and make it a "parent" of all the billable meters. Easy to see "non-technical losses" when you can look at a "family" of meters as a unit. Lots of fun with smart meters.. I'm not allowed to share the graphs (visualization) that show what such fraud looks like from that perspective, but lets say it is almost a flashing neon sign.

Utilities would benefit if "Grow Ops" were legal, and people just paid for the juice they used.

#Comment Re: made: 2011-01-08 01:04:47.723688+00 by: meuon

Like is said.. Grow Ops.

I was surprised at a metering/utility industry presentation from a guy from a Canadian utility about the amount of, and value of, the fraud from "grow ops".

No, I don't mean simple turn the meter upside down 4 hours a day stuff.. I mean, the utility lineman working "off days" to build substations to feed high voltage feeds without metering (and paying bills) stuff.

#Comment Re: made: 2011-01-07 23:14:31.228544+00 by: Dan Lyke

Every once in a while Marin (and Sebastopol) makes me roll my eyes and say "oh geez.". This is one of those times.

Especially since, having lived in unincorporated Marin, I can tell you there are probably already 5 WiFi access points accessible from any particular meter.