"[WASHINGTON] Several Pepco customers say they're experiencing irregular heartbeats, headaches, and dizziness after wireless smart meters were installed at their homes."
Others have chimed in with complaints as varied as hair falling out, warts, and loose teeth. One man says his dog no longer knows him. (Of course these latter symptoms didn't make the story!)
Reminds me of an instrument technician we had back at school who got sick from the helium in our gas chromatographs.
don't know about all that, but my fricken bill has gone up about 20% since they installed the MF
These meters are being installed to save the power company money but the public service commission here in Delaware has approved a price increase so the customer pays for them. Wonder who in the hell this makes sense to? Bribes, corruption - no not our public officials ;)
Mental cases will always find something to go mental over.
Mostly to the green environmentalists who buy into the most extraordiary claims. Like that these meters are essential to allow solar and wind resources to be used. WTF? We have solar panels all over the place here in the Peoples Republic of NJ and no smart meters. Funny, they seem to work just fine.
The main advantage that I see is they allow for billing rates to vary by period. That way the utility could charge higher rates during peak periods and the billing would more closely reflect your actual usage. An example of that would be if you charged your electric car at night and they charged you less because it's off peak. But for those cases, mabye a better idea is to let those people who have an electric car and want to get a lower rate at night, pay for the meter themselves....
Another example of American paranoia. The same halfwits wander around with a cellphone clamped to their ear.
Oh, we pay for them too. I paid for 2 years before I got one and as far as i can tell the charge is forever. gotta love them bastards of utility commision.............if they were hangin from a rope
Totally 100% bogus, of course.
Nothing new here, just more lazy Obama supporters looking for an easy payday!
Good grief Harry, you English invented crazy. ^_^
TDD
yeah, I see those small solar panels on the telephone poles all over NJ.
I figure each panel makes what? $100 worth of electricity per year??? at best?
how much did it cost the taxpayers to have each one of those installed on a pole by a crew? and how much will it cost to maintain...
what a scam
Mark
"devnull" wrote
No, for the most part they're anti-government rightwing nutso freaks who think that everything new is a government conspiracy of some sort.
We have them here too. Sometimes there is a tiny wind turbine too. An ex-neighbour of mine has a PV system/battery that powers his electric driveway gates. Cheaper than running a quarter mile of cable. They are installed where it would be costly to provide an alternative source of power
harry wrote in news:dbd3954d-ae20-4dfe-b022- snipped-for-privacy@cd3g2000vbb.googlegroups.com:
Where I live, such solar panels are often installed immediately under existing power lines. For example, those flashing lights that sit atop certain traffic signs; until recently, those lights simply had a short drop of cable from the overhead power, but now have a solar panel. Abominably stupid and expensive, but in keeping with the current tyrant's Green dreams.
The ones in Jersey are feeding back into the grid.
Where I live, we are running out of fossil fuels.
Maybe we should capture free energy from the sun?
Harry Johnson wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news3.newsguy.com:
You obviously don't live on Earth. Earth currently has a glut of fossil fuels, and prices are declining.
Not if that energy costs many times the price of fossil fuels.
Not if it takes more fossil fuel to excavate, refine, manufacture and distribute a solar panel than the energy the panel can produce during it's working life.
It is a toy for people who can get government subsidies.
Here's a real world example:
A 25 watt panel costs about $125 . That is the cost to produce the panel and get it into the hands of a homeowner -- i.e. the selling price, typically.
Use Dallas as a location. 10 cents per kwh and a yearly average of 5.5 hours of "full sun" per day.
OK $125 means 1,250,000 watt-hours of electricity
That means 1,250,000 / (5.5 x 25) = 9091 days of power generation at full panel ability.
That means 9091/365 = 24.9 years to break even on cost of generated power, assuming zero maintenance and zero damage from rain and hail.
An unsustainable scenario.......
And if you figure in the cost of external infrastructure that's needed --- batteries, wiring, power converter, installation costs, maintenance on the infrastructure...
..... the business decision is a no-brainer....
Solar is a TOY, unless there is no other possible way.......Even a gasoline generator is more cost-effective...
Yes, harry is as clueless as ever. Probably 95%+ of the solar installed is at spots that already have power. Here in NJ, in addition to seeing small ones on utility poles, there are bigger arrays on the roofs of a lot of homes and businesses. They don't work without the grid being alive. If the grid goes down, you have no power.
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