Smart Meter: Just Say No!
I received a knock on my door from the JCP&L (Jersey Central Power and Light) man last week. He told me he is just letting me know that he will be replacing my current electrical utility meter with a sMaRt MeTeR. I immediately explained that I was not interested in that. I am not interested in any SMART device in my home. It is bad enough I have a smart-phone. And sure, maybe a smart meter does not emit enough EMF to damage me, but why should I compound the EMF I am exposed to for the sake of a company.
The worker was not surprised at my refusal and explained no one wants it. I asked him why would anyone want it? and here were his reasons.
- It is good for the company, they will be able to lay off 15,000 workers. (I swear he said 150,000, but I am not sure anymore so I am low-balling it).
- It will provide more accurate readings of my electrical usage.
This guy is walking around proudly proclaiming he is removing jobs from the work-force. His job is most likely in jeopardy as well so I am not sure the cognitive dissonance he had to go through to actual muster the courage to speak those words into existence. And I do not know why he thinks I would rejoice at hearing about massive layoffs in my community, state or country. Baffling.
And when it comes to more accurate readings: I do not want accurate readings, I want inaccurate readings in my favor. Especially if the company is working towards sacking employees, they should suffer a bit too, don’t ya think?
I told him I am still not interested and I would rather not have my meter replaced. He informed me it would cost an extra $15 per month if I did not get the meter replacement. That is an extra $180 per year I would have to pay. My inner grabbler came out and I just said “FINE, go install it”. Inflation is real right now, I do not need another bill.
He goes to the backyard to install the thing, my power flickers and he is on his way. I try to ssh into my on-prem server that this website is hosted on and I cannot log in. I waited an hour and tried again. My server is totally headless and I need to move wires around to connect it to a screen, so I go through that effort and I am hit with this message:
SMART stands for Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology and it is a system for monitoring hard disks. My 4TB hard drive was failing with a raw_read_error_rate in the 60k range. The guy must have sent some sort of power surge through my house directly into my server and fried my HDD. Luckily it was in RAID 1 so I had a backup of the data. My system started acting weird altogether though and I had a hard time removing the software raid configuration from both hard-drives. I ended up spending 3 days rebuilding my system (which is something that needed to happen anyway).
I filed a claim with JCP&L and still have not heard anything back. They better pay for my HDD replacement. I also bought 3 12TB HDDs to put in RAID 5 to hopefully save my ass if this happens again. I am also looking into a UPS to protect against surges and unexpected shut downs.
Moral of the story: Try and fight off the smart meter man. If an overwhelming majority of people do not want it, they will have to honor our wishes. I am paying for the sin of not standing up for my morals and giving in because of an extra $15 per month. I was immediately punished with 3 days worth of server work with the irony of a S.M.A.R.T. message slapping me in my face for allowing a smart meter to be installed.