BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- Following a lengthy townhall meeting on Smart Meter implementation in Bakersfield on Monday evening -- attended by hundreds of PG&E customers whose moods ranged from frustrated to irate – Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez (D-Shafter) visited the California Public Utilities Commission office in San Francisco Wednesday with a list of actions the CPUC should require of PG&E as it relates to the new meters, which many are blaming for a dramatic spike in their utility bills.

Florez personally presented a letter with recommendations based on findings from Monday’s townhall meeting, which stretched nearly to midnight due to the volume of public comment, to CPUC President Michael Peevy.

Smart Meters are ultimately supposed to give consumers real-time information on their energy usage, so they can make adjustments to save on their bills, but the technology to allow the sort of communication needed to achieve that will not be in place for years. So far, only the utility itself seems to be saving -- eliminating the labor costs of manually reading older meters -- as many consumers have seen their bills more than double despite having cut back on energy consumption.

In Wednesday’s letter to the CPUC, which pushed for the implementation of Smart Meters, Florez asks that PG&E be required to place a moratorium on installation of more Smart Meters and further rate hikes until an independent technology expert can attest to the accuracy of the new meters’ calibration and compare their accuracy to traditional meters.

Florez also asks that PG&E be required to monitor a representative sample of Smart Meters, perhaps 10 percent, as opposed to 50 Smart Meters the company testified they have tested out of 250,000 installed so far in Kern County.

In addition, Florez is calling for the creation of a Citizen’s Oversight Committee to review PG&E’s progress on customer complaints on a monthly basis and conduct an annual performance review.

As discussed Monday night, Florez is asking that PG&E be required to report to the Office of the Ratepayer Advocate on means by which they will notify customers in the future when they are about to hit the next tier of energy consumption, such as by cellular text or e-mail.

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Oct. 5, 2009: Florez Questions PG&E Over Smart Meters, Rate Hikes

Information provided by sen.ca.gov