What are ‘smart meters’?

Avoiding Smart Meter’s in Victoria

(A Manual of facts to help you)

The aim of this web page is to provide you with some little known facts to assist you in your fight to protect your health, privacy and democratic right to say ‘NO’. It has been compiled from personal experience and many hours of research.

What are ‘smart meters’?

1. Smart Meters are part of a mesh wireless network, which is based on Ultra-High Frequency radio waves, called Radio Frequency ElectroMagnetic Fields (later in text RF-EMF). Their main purpose is to send detailed information about customer's electricity usage to the distributors using wireless communication.

As a result of receiving information by radio (usually 4 times per day) distributors will no longer need Meter Readers. Also, because of almost real time data access, distributors can react quicker to changes in network's load.

http://www.unitedenergy.com.au/customers/your-electricity/smart-meter-rollout.aspx

Smart meters are two-way, digital communication systems that record detailed electricity usage and store this data into 30 minute intervals and automatically send this data to the electricity distributors.

To make it simple: a smart meter is a digital electric meter with two build-in ‘mobile phones’.

2. The first ‘phone’ makes at least 4 calls to central office every 24 hours, each call up to 10 sec long, and also sends/receives a non-predictable amount of messages to/from Smart Meters in the neighbourhood (this is called a ‘mesh network’).

3. The second ‘phone’ looks for so-called ‘smart’ electrical appliances in the consumer's home; these appliances will be AS4755 compliant, with built-in wireless transmitters. After establishing contact with these appliances, the Smart Meter is able to collect detailed information about their usage and their electrical consumption (this is called a HAN, Home Area Network). These appliances can be turned on or off remotely by the distributor, or hackers who will hack into the system! It depends on distributor's policy, but many of them keep the second ‘phone’ permanently ‘on’ and people are exposed to RF-EMF radiation 24/7/365.

More information here:

http://smartgridaustralia.com.au/SGA/Documents/IN_Work_Group_SmartMeter_HAN_Comms.pdf

4. If you care about your health, privacy, safety and security you should avoid buying any goods which have unneeded wireless devices. Ask questions and do research before purchasing printer, fridge, washing machine and even toaster!

They can hurt your health, assist thefts or put your privacy in danger.