Naperville began replacing traditional electric meters with wireless smart meters Wednesday despite pleas from opponents who have filed a federal lawsuit and also are attempting to put a referendum on the March ballot.
Crews installed 275 meters beginning with neighborhoods just north of downtown, according to Nadja Lalvani, the city’s community relations manager.
City officials say the meters will make the electric system more reliable and efficient and reduce costs.
“We believe we’re doing the absolute right thing for our customers and we are going to continue to move forward with full deployment,” Lalvani said.
The meters will immediately begin transmitting electric usage data to the city, according to Lalvani, but special features like ePortal, which allows residents to monitor their own power usage, will be rolled out at a later date.
However, critics like the Naperville Smart Meter Awareness Group have expressed health, security, and privacy concerns about the wireless meters and questioned the accuracy of financial projections. The group recently filed a federal lawsuit trying to halt the project and the city’s electoral board also is reviewing the group’s petition to put a non-binding referendum on the March ballot asking residents if the city should stop implementation of the smart meter project and dismantle the equipment.
“We’re definitely disappointed they decided to move forward even with our federal filing of our injunction,” smart meter opponent Jennifer Stahl said Wednesday. “We are disappointed they’re not acknowledging the rights of the people to be able to make the choice.”
Lalvani said she believes the city addressed residents’ concerns through steps like preliminary testing of the meters and a customer bill of rights.
Opponents are encouraging residents to refuse meters and Lalvani said 16 people did so when installers arrived at their home Wednesday. Those residents were given a phone number to call so they could either reschedule the installation or request a non-wireless meter.
Refusals, she said, must be verbal and installers will return to the home two more times over the course of a month to attempt to install a wireless meter. If a resident refuses three times and has not signed up for a non-wireless meter, the installer will return with a police escort.
Customers who choose a non-wireless meter will pay a one-time charge of $68.35 to cover the additional cost of the equipment, as well as $24.75 a month to have the meters read. Lalvani said 250 people have expressed interest in the non-wireless meters, but so far only seven have officially signed up for one.
Installation of 57,000 meters will continue throughout the year. Residents will receive a letter roughly six to eight weeks prior to installation at their home. The project is expected to cost $22 million, half of which is being paid by the federal government.
The city is holding a series of workshops regarding meter installation. The next workshop is scheduled for 7 p.m. Jan. 11 at Kendall Elementary School, 2408 Meadow Lake Dr.
It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once. – David Hume, in 1742
How exactly does a nation become a police state? Does it happen overnight? Or bit-by-bit?
The political hacks in Naperville, hiding behind city employees have reported that they will call the police to force citizens to have meters placed on their private homes. Instead of this pathological brute force attempt to bend citizens into their will, why not try the reasonable approach being used by PG&E? Let people keep their analog meters and “wow” them with all the benefits that their neighbors receive by letting the government help manage their homes? Try the free market approach of pull, rather than push. If it’s a great program people will freely join.
Hey Lalvani, you forgot to tell the press that those who choose to “work around” are being discriminated against ,being forced to sign a special contract with the city to be gouged with extortion like fees to have their homes monitored with a non-wireless meter, collecting the data 2,880 times a month. Show the citizens all the certificates insurance, including workers comp on the installers. Lalvani, if theses meters cause a fire or damage to our homes, who will be liable? Will homeowners have to go after big business to try to get relief? Or is the hand picked, or should I say packed Public Citizens Utility Board, who’s self proclaimed head is a smart grid ambassador going to decide? Take away our privacy and exchange it with a toothless bill of rights? If you aren’t taking away our privacy, then why do we need a bill of rights?
“The day our lives begin to end is when we become silent on the things that matter.” Dr. Martin Luther King. The thug-like behavior of City Council to force, by police action, homeowners to have potentially dangerous and invasive monitoring equipment on their homes is exactly the perfect storm of crony business, government owned utility monopoly and politicians taking our homes for their own schemes. Our homes are being turned into wireless transmission stations with Curran and others salivating at future “ventures” for these monitoring devices. The latest “quelling” of dissent came when Pradel now is publicly characterizing citizens who ask questions about these meters as interrogators. Wow. Follow the money, some very ambitious people have a lot at stake here.
First your freedom of speech, then your right to vote, then your private property rights, then police intimadation what is next Naperville gulag?
What a bunch of thugs and light weights!