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Ready, Aim, Safeguard: A Smart Meter Safety Protocol

by Tony P. Simmons, P.E. and Katie Singer

TO:
General Counsel
NAME YOUR ELECTRIC UTILITY
ADDRESS
DATE

We the undersigned NAME YOUR UTILITY ratepayers have received notice that you intend to install, or have already installed, smart utility meters on our homes (and/or commercial properties). We consider this project an unannounced, unauthorized and unsupervised field trial that evaluates the safety of our meter sockets and your smart meters as an assembly. Respectfully, we demand that you exclude our meter socket from your field trial until your general counsel has approved engineering documents prepared under the responsible charge of and then signed, dated and stamped by a state-licensed professional electrical engineer (PE). Signing, dating and stamping indicate “sealing” or “certifying;” they signify that the PE has evaluated and mitigated all safety hazards and assumed all civil and criminal liability for errors and omissions in the engineering document. The seal demarks liability.

Smart meters, including those with an internal service switch, are electrical devices. The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) recognizes five fire hazards associated with the use of electricity: electrical contact, thermal effects, overcurrent, fault current and overvoltage. NAME YOUR UTILITY’s sealed engineering documents must certify that each of these hazards has been evaluated and mitigated. Until then, the installation cannot be considered safe.

ANSI C12.10 (American National Standard for Physical Aspects of the Watthour Meter) contains no specifications for an internal service switch, also known as “a remote disconnect.” Meters with an internal service switch are most accurately described as a “combination Watt-hour-meter and service switch device.” Therefore, any meter that contains an internal service switch is a non-standard meter. It requires a PE’s comprehensive evaluation of the meter’s safety, the meter socket safety, and the safety of the meter-socket assembly.

The ANSI C12.7 Requirements for Watthour Meter Sockets standard was created to ensure that ANSI C12.7-compliant meter socket and ANSI C12.10-compliant meters were safe as an assembly. Because the national standard for meters did not contemplate an internal service switch, the Underwriters Lab (UL) standard for meter sockets, UL 414, did not develop a test procedure to ensure that the meter socket can withstand the torques and forces of the service switch’s operation. Meters sockets that do not conform to ANSI C12.7 and/or meters that do not conform to ANSI C12.10 require more extensive safety evaluation.

Other utilities have been demonstrably remiss in their meter selection process. Consequently, the meters that they installed have imperiled the life, health and property of their customers and increased utility owners and shareholders’ liability risk. NAME YOUR UTILITY therefore has a duty to demonstrate that it has not made similar mistakes during meter selection. Before installing a nonstandard meter on our homes, NAME YOUR UTILITY must ensure that the non-standard meter does not imperil its customers’ life, health and property. To achieve that goal, NAME YOUR UTILITY must ensure that the following NFPA-recognized hazards have been mitigated:

  • Overvoltage In March, 2015, an auto accident in Stockton, California caused a transmission line carrying 60,000 volts and a distribution line carrying 12,000 volts to make contact. As a result, dozens of PG&E-owned meters exploded from homeowners’ sockets, 5800 homes lost power, more than 50 homes had significant electrical damage, and over eighty fires were reported. This incident created a duty for all utilities to mitigate the hazards of overvoltage at the meter and the meter-socket assembly. Your meter must not explode like the meters did in Stockton, California. https://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2015/03/30/stockton-smart-meters-explode-after-truck-causes-power-surge/
  • Fault Current The utility-owned short circuit protection mitigates the hazards associated with fault current. Typically, the primary fuse protecting the transformer protects the utility-owned meter and the customer-owned meter socket from the hazards associated with fault current (arcing). A PE-sealed short circuit and coordination study must demonstrate that the hazards of fault current and overcurrent have been evaluated and mitigated. Absence of this study would be prima facie evidence of negligence by NAME YOUR UTILITY.
  • Overcurrent The customer-owned main breaker or fuses protect the meter and meter socket from the hazards associated with overcurrent.
  • Fault current In January, 2015, the Ontario (Canada) Electrical Safety Authority (ESA) directed all utilities in its province to remove a specific smart meter model as a safety hazard. A sealed engineering report explained that these meters could experience internal fault current (arcing) precipitated by water intrusion. Seventeen utilities in Florida, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Saskatchewan and Ontario removed 795,000 meters as a safety precaution. Note that testing performed by these meters’ manufacturer had not detected the water intrusion. www.OurWeb.tech/E-safety-authority-report.pdf

See also https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/more-fires-more-smart-meter-recalls-for-sensus Jeff St. John, “More Fires, More Smart Meter Recalls for Sensus: Utilities pull 105,000 meters in Canada, 70,000 in Oregon; Sensus says it’s not at fault,” Green Tech Media, August 4, 2014.

  • As previously described, UL standard 414 has no testing protocol to ensure that the meter socket can withstand the forces and torques of service switch operation. To protect the life, health and property of its residential and commercial customers, NAME YOUR UTILITY has a duty to require that a state-licensed PE provides a sealed report certifying that all existing customer-owned meter sockets can withstand the torques and forces of internal switch operation.
  • NAME YOUR UTILITY also has a duty to ensure that its meters’ internal service switches have been tested and certified by a nationally recognized testing lab, such as UL, or by a state-licensed PE.
  • The NFPA reports that a national, significant increase in fixed-wire fires began in 2011 (when many utilities began installing smart meters). The inexplicable increase led three fire-safety experts to research its cause. During the April 8, 2021 meeting of the California Conference of Arson Investigators, these three experts—an arson investigator, forensic electrical engineer and physicist—presented their ongoing investigation hypothesizing that smart meters’ reflected radiofrequency (RF) emissions break down the chlorine molecule in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) insulation used on fixed wires. These nationally-recognized fire safety experts hypothesize that smart meters’ RF emissions can create micro-fissures in PVC, and that this has caused the increase in fixed-wire fires. Here is the link to their presentation: www.ourweb.tech/CCAI-presentation.pdf

NAME YOUR UTILITY has a duty to ensure that their equipment’s reflected RF emissions do not imperil customers’ fixed-wiring systems.

NAME YOUR UTILITY has a duty to protect its customers’ life, health and property and its owners’ liability. Until NAME YOUR UTILITY’s general counsel accepts a sealed engineering report certifying that the hazards of its meters, the customer-owned meter sockets, and the meter-socket assemblies have been evaluated and mitigated, the smart meter project must be treated as an unannounced, unauthorized and unsupervised field trial. You are not authorized to install a digital, transmitting meter with an internal service switch on our homes. If you have already installed a smart meter on our property, you must replace it with a meter, such as an analog mechanical meter, that has been proven not to imperil customers’ life, health and property by NAME YOUR DATE.

In closing, we require a letter from NAME YOUR UTILITY’s general counsel by NAME YOUR DATE stating that you will not install smart meters on our properties without a PE’s sealed report, and that if/when you do provide a PE’s sealed report certifying your meter’s safety, you will provide us with a minimum two months’ notice before installing the meter.

Signed,

NAME & ADDRESS
NAME & ADDRESS
NAME & ADDRESS

Have your letter hand-delivered (by a process-server) OR by certified mail.