Hydro and their installation company Corix, need to be stopped! I fear some elderly couple or handycapped persons may become victoms of a poorly installed SmartMeter that has decided to overheat and burn their home down! To desturb an old analogue meter, that may have oxidized pins and, try to connect a new unit with new pins, without proper replacement of all old connecting hardware is asking for trouble! If you have resistance and arcing due to corrosion, it may get hot enough to melt insulation/plastic etc (house fire) This may not be the meters fault or the house wiring, but how these meters are being installed! I understand, these meters are being changed, even if the home owners are not in attendance! Hey folks, the guys doing the installation, are they certified electricians? What about house insurance issues? Correct me if wrong, but do we not have to hire a certified electrician for any work that involves 240 vac in the breaker box or power mains areas? Damage to appilances, the smartmeter, or both could result! I believe this technology to be flawed! If that is believed incorrect, then prove why the appliance damage, house fires and people getting sick in Ontario, Austrailia, and all over the United States! Oh yes, I have noticed a lot of house fires recently! Also, what about the interference to other electronics, and licenced users of this band of frequencies (902 mhz to 928mhz) chosen for SmartMeter operation. It is my understanding that Hydros use of this band is unlicenced! How can they not interfere with all others on this band, when the SmartMeter uses a frequency hopping system! This means, that a SmartMeter signal hops all over the band and, since the average home electronics has a very broadband receiver, interference cannot be avoided! The 900 mhz transmitter in these smartmeters is 1 watt output power and, for comparison, the average home wireless router is less than 1/10 th of that! On the topic of interference, the internal SmartMeter power supply may be genereating lots of interference called hash! This can cause am radios and many other home devices to work poorly or not at all! I believe this power supply to be called a switching power supply and, they are famous for interference! That interference will travel all over your house wiring and, over the air for a distance! If we let Hydro continue, this will only be the start of problems! When the SmartMeter is installed, the 900 mhz transceiver is operating and, a 2.4 Ghz (gigaherz) transceiver is not activated, but contained within every meter! At some not to distant time, that 2.4 ghz transceiver will be used to communicate with other smart devices in the home and, possibly a gas meter transceiver! A water meter transceiver will also communicate via 2.4ghz! Hydro' estimated transmit time daily is only in part! These meters have an antenna inside the meter container for 900 mhz, 2.4ghz and possibly a cellular freq! Because stationary or moving objects may prevent communication between the meter and collection point, your neighbours meter will relay the signal and that will happen untill it is received by that same collection point! I am not sure how many homes to a collection point in Canada, but some places in the States are 500 to 700 homes to one collection point! How could a SmartMeter only transmit for a minute a day if relaying other meter info, sending that meters info, sending beacon signals, communicating with gas/water devices and, communicating with smart device equiped home appilances A concerned B.C. Canada homeowner

Yes - smart meters are safe (or at least of much lower risk that many everyday activities). There doesn't seem to be any evidence of actual harm from the levels of EM produced by smart meters. Comparisons with cell phones, or with wifi routers, probably won't convince certain people of their safety though. There are people that claim sensitivity to radio waves - and at least some of those people do have a consistent story - they refuse to use cell phones or have wifi in their houses. I don't know if anyone with such a claimed sensitivity to EM has undergone any rigorous tests to confirm their self diagnosis. Some pieces of the government are playing along with this. San Francisco recently passed an ordinance requiring cell phones (or perhaps their packaging) to be labelled with relative EM radiation levels ... so that consumers could make "informed choices" when buying. It isn't clear how informed those choices would be because there seem to be huge variations in actual radiation from the cell phone - depending on how much signal it thinks it needs to make a good connection to the local cell tower.

Our utility in Maine (Central Maine Power) has an excellent FAQ about smart meters that debunks a lot of the concerns: http://www.cmpco.com/smartmeter/ They also have an excellent infographic page as a pdf document created by a Princeton PhD: http://www.cmpco.com/MediaLibrary/3/6/Content%20Management/YourAccount/PDFs%20and%20Docs/RF_FactSheet_web.pdf Anyone who reads through this information will quickly realize that smart meters produce such a tiny amount of RF energy that it is barely measurable compared to cell phones. Even the human body radiates 20 times as much RF as a smart meter for heavens sake!