There have been arguments, debates and a lot of opinions on the subject of smart meters and their cost to the city. Now it seems it's time for the installation.
Will there still be efforts to block or get rid of smart meters? Are you still worried about safety?
Ready for your smart meter?
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We need to quit automatically electing people with the "right" names.
Stop with all the Wherlis, Boadheads, etc. Make them actually declare their initiatives, etc., and not just cruise on the ground troops of theirnparry backing.
Exactly right Sam - on the ballot or off, these guys only listen to voices that support whatever they've already decided to do. They will probably try to put the whole electrical system on the ballot, instead of focusing on the Smart Meters and Tropos that are the actual issue. Many people do not want the meters - for a variety of reasons, health, privacy, or simple over reaching government WASTE - but watch how your City Council spins this one. They have no intention of listening to anyone, no matter their concern. The only hope this town has is to vote OUT the council and hope the inept management team goes with them.
I wouldn't assume the issue is going to be on the ballot. Why would the City take a chance on a real reading of public opinion? As someone already pointed out, they cannot back down and cannot undo what they've begun. All they can do is spned more money to convince us what a good idea it was/is.
If it does get on the ballot, do you think it will matter? Consider the status of the last referendum regarding at-large representation in Naperville. First, they convince a judge that they need 5 years to design the districts. Now, there appears to be a movement to take those five years and spend the time trying to overturn the result of the election. I'm ambivalent about the "at-large" issue, but the City's total disregard for the will of the people is obvious-- and disgraceful.
The smart grid is here to stay and we will all pay for it in higher electric bills.
It will be interesting to see what the City Council does if the referendum passes in March.
They will probably take their usual stance and push ahead knowing that only 10,000 willl show up to vote in 2013 and will not hold them responsible.
If this project is allowed to be comoleted, the City will have given themselves the authority to do whatever they please, with no regard to the people who live here or what they want. The people will be the ones paying for this for many years to come, and the people will see little, if any, benefit. The meters are not necessary to upgrade the infrastructure. This issue will be on the ballot in March. Get out and vote "YES" to stop the project. And then, when the City says it will be expensive to undue everything they already implemented, ask them why they kept plowing forward, costing us all of this money, when they were VERY aware that the people they serve never wanted this in the first place.
A beautiful description Hatter! Don't expect much change from the Council Elite - the arrogance and condescending attitudes are almost certainly going to persist until the voters remove them. Just guessing, but when they are gone, they will probably still believe that WE all simply didn't understand.
The scandal of the smart meters in Naperville is getting curiouser and curiouser!
After all, the City Council (which apparently does believe that curiosity leads to trouble!!) is using the circular logic of Wonderland when addressing questions on the smart meters: They don't want our input because the decision to install smart meters has already been made, but they chose to make that decision without our input!
Say what?
Oh, and in the process of ignoring the concept of transparency the Council has consistently gone out of its way to insult citizens who have asked for a voice in the process and treated them with contempt and condescension.
Of course, if asked I would have told the Council that channeling the Red Queen is not a way to win friends and influence people. In fact, it would appear to be the fastest way to an unwanted referendum as over 5000 Naperville citizens have asked for one! [Perhaps our city council is finally beginning to understand the perils of exhibiting a superiority complex when dealing with an electorate.]
This entire affair is shocking ---- shocking I tell you! Who would have guessed that when the expectation of trust, respect, and transparency is breached that people would actually notice or care? Don't we know that curiousity often leads to trouble?
How do we fix this mess? Begin at the beginning ........
There is NO objectivity in the Sun's reporting when it comes to the City Council or the City Management - and these articles would be funny if they were not so sad. The current level of reliability of our electrical system in Naperville is a credit to Management of the PAST. The current approach as evidenced by this Smart Grid is going to take all those positives and turn them into money LOSING adventures for all of us.
For a while, I thought I was the only one who noticed the publication of pr pieces as news. Why are our tax dollars ever used to write articles for the SUN? In addition to the electric department, we have Marcy Schatz (SP?), the mayor and the police chief. The use of these guest columnists will weaken the paper's objectivity.
Just another reminder that time of day pricing impacts will be compounded for homeowners. The City's electric consumption is during peak pricing hours -- guess who pays for that -- taxpayers. The schools' usage peaks during peak pricing hours. Again, who will pay that premium? Taxpayers. Every business in town operates primarily during peak pricing hours. Who will pay for their electricity --customers -- you and I. Rates are not going to decrease and overall cost is not going to decrease. The cost may be redistributed because of the smart grid, but the total cost of electricity will not go down.
I simply cannot accept the explanation that the smart grid will ever save money. Our grid is incredibly reliable already. Kudos to the management! Anyone tour the control center and look at the sophisticated monitoring that is already being done? How much better can it get? When is the last time you experienced an outage? How long did it last?
I read that of the $22 million budget, $1.35 million is going to public relations. If that is true, it is a disgrace.
Did everyone see the next PR piece the City places under the guise of an article by the Electric Dept. Director? How can they not be embarrassed by this? The cost of this project has spiraled out of control, yet these multi million dollar consultants are still writing fluff pieces and having them published as free advertising by slapping a picture of this guy on it and calling it an "article".
Come on Naperville Sun, way past time for an expose as opposed to this twisted fluff!
Tiered pricing is not the end game for SmartGrid. Implementing a tiered price structure is just a tip of the iceberg. To understand this fully one must research the dozens of different demonstration projects that were funded in 2009 and then piece them all together to get a clearer view of the end game.
A flavor of this is that yes, tiered pricing will come. What most people don't yet realize is that it will evolve into a tiered, tiered price system. Different prices at different times and different days and different seasons. However, each tier will have another tier that will depend upon what kind of technology and control you are willing to hand over to the electric company/department.
To get the absolute lowest tier pricing will require SmartGrid controlled appliances like thermostats, water heaters, refrigerators, freezers, etc. that will allow the utility to remotely manage when these applicances are used, at what temperature settings and when the utility can "load shed" or remotely turn them off.
Even more interesting is a software solution to grid distribution problems that was implemented in Washington state that found they could reduce electric consumption across the system by 50% without any need for SmartGrid and it was all about electricity waste being excessively pumped into the grid because they were not managing the actual consumption even closely to actual demand.
The truth is there are lots of "ideas" being touted on how to reduce demand and waste. Many of them are nothing more than ideas and experiments and Naperville has committed us to being test guinea pigs for the rest of America. A test that may well fail and waste millions.
short story version:
no economic benefit
coming soon, time of day pricing and maybe volume pricing
smart thermostats are here now, voluntary today, mandatory tomorrow
anything with a processor and software can and will be hacked
underlying premise, electricity is evil because coal emits co2
if coal is evil, people who cause the burning of coal are evil (coal is burned to meet peak demand), people who burn coal need to be punished economically
granny keeps her house too hot in the winter and too cool in the summer, granny is evil and needs to pay more to correct her behavior
bad granny
since the FEDS are willing to subsidize the punishment of granny, the City Council will be a good lap dog and punish granny
bad City Council
The post By Anonymous [September 24, 2011 2:07 PM | Reply]. Is an absolutely accurate description of this fiasco.
For anyone who wants a giggle, get a hold of the entire budget and business plan on this project (it was presented a few times to the community and used to be available online) ----- there is an inordinate amount of the 22 mil going towards the meters themselves. In find it hard to believe such a learned community as Naperville does not already know that using appliances in non- peak hours puts less stress on the system! Of course the end game is to hit us with the tiered pricing system.
Personally, I think the money spent on the grid itself is an investment better than gold. The meters should be strictly voluntary.
You are exactly right. We will all be paying for more, getting less and there will be only one thing that we get that you did not mention. That is simply bragging rights. It is very important for a wide variety of people in this town to be able to brag about how wonderful Naperville is. Naperville is very smart indeed and very progressive to be one of the first communites in the midwest to be so smart even our electric meeters are smart. Now we can brag that we have the Florida based Lang Gang targeting Naperville too. It is very nice to add to our cultural diversity a Carribiean origin gang of criminals to our growing base of home grown transplanted Chicago thieves. As for voting, right again. Voting for incumbents probably makes them less likely to listen to voters which is why they do not care or listen to voters.
There is a big problem with the new meters in that they are years if not decades ahead of any useful appliances being able to interact with them from a savings perspective. What that means from a practical perspective is that we will probably be on the second or third generation of these meters before any true net benefit might be seen... and we will be paying for generation 2, 3, 4, etc. completely out of our own pocket without any federal grants. What that also means is the only true, useful function these meters will have in the interim is to convert everyone from a flat rate billing system to a tiered rate billing system. That is the real reason the city wants to install these meters. And anyone who believes their utility bill is going to decrease with a tiered rate system is kidding themselves.
Another problem with the smart meter is it's useful life. The old meters were extremely reliable and had a useful life of well over 30 years. There are parts of Chicago with meters that are way older and still work just fine. No one knows exactly how long these new meters will last and I'm willing to bet the manufacturer isn't giving us a 30 or 40 year warranty... probably something more like 12 months. Anyone with a WiFi router knows full well these devices don't last forever and actually have a fairly short life cycle. And that doesn't even begin to address the issue of just how much WiFi standards have evolved in the last 10 years nor how the city intends to keep tens of thousands of meters updated.
If this was all about better management of the electrical grid... which is part of what the city claimed... there would be absolutely NO need to install any meters on any individual house. Instead a meter could be installed on every transformer for about one-tenth the cost and one-tenth the amount of equipment and the city would still now exactly where in the grid differing levels of demand existed and would be making exactly the same kind of adjustments to compensate.
This is all about electrical department revenue. This is all about implementing a tiered rate structure. Anyone who tells you differently is lying through their teeth.
A fundamental problem when comparing how the city government works to say the school district is that the city can force this down our throat and there isn't a whole lot we can do except vote the bums out of office. In comparison the school district can't go and spend millions of dollars like this without holding a referendum. A few years ago there was a referendum in 204 about air conditioning and the voters said they didnt want to pay for it. At this point no one seems to factually know how many voters actually support these meters or not and the arrogance on city council is clear... they don't care. Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.
Anyone want to bet who I'm going to vote for during the next city council election?
The problem is that we never had a choice. Safety is probably not a major issue, but those who are concerned about it have every right to their feelings. It's the attitude of this City Council, and Sr. City Management that they get to decide, without any concern for how the residents feel, to spend $22 MILLION plus on this project that is so incredibly disturbing. The arrogance and lack of consideration given to the input of those who have to live with this system, and pay for it, is a prime example of what is wrong with City Government.