Friday, March 20, 2015

DTE & Consumers Energy Smart Meters

DTE & Consumers Energy Smart Meters

Harm Your Health
Harm the Environment
Collect Data You Might Prefer Be Kept Private
Will Raise Your Electric Rates

If you have received a threatening letter from DTE that implies your service will be shut off, read our How to Respond page and contact us. These letters are not official notices. They are a ploy by DTE to raise fear. 
DTE representatives occasionally come to customer’s doors and tell them they have 2 weeks to accept a smart meter or their power will be shut off. They are not legally able to take such action. Read more on our How to Respond page.
See the reports Michigan residents have sent to us about how smart meters have affected their health on our smartmeterhealth page. View gripping testimony of health problems at the Michigan Smart Meter Hearings. Nearly 100 people testifying about the effects on their health. Watch the videos (Part 1 and Part 2). 
Many people in Michigan are experiencing severe symptoms and health effects from DTE and Consumers Energy smart meters and their radio-off opt-out meters. (DTE calls smart meters advanced meters and uses descriptions like advanced metering technology in an effort to avoid the negative publicity associated with smart meters.) Smart meters and DTE’s radio-off opt-out meter have a dramatic impact on health because of the pulsed waves they emit, both radiofrequency (wireless) waves and what is commonly called dirty electricity. For some people, this impact is immediately apparent in the form of insomnia, tinnitus, memory problems, and many other health issues. For others, the health effects come down the road. Thousands of independent, non–industry-funded scientific studies (for example, Bioinitiative ReportForty Scientists) have shown that the electromagnetic frequencies emitted by smart and digital meters cause severe health problems, including cancerADD, and the breaching of the blood-brain barrier. Read our health page for more information. For an excellent video, mp3, and Powerpoint presentation on how smart meters work, why what the utility industry tells you shades the truth, and how radiofrequency (RF) emissions affect health, click here.  
DTE representatives have started coming to customer’s doors and telling them they have 2 weeks to accept a smart meter or their power will be shut off. The are not legally able to take such action. Read more on our How to Respond page.

Very importantly, DTE’s opt-out meter will not protect your health! Click here to learn about the dirty electricity that both smart meters and digital meters generate. Learn what to do about it, by clicking here and here. Consumers Energy is currently allowing residential customers to keep their current meter. However, it is unlikely that this will continue. Click here to learn more.

Privacy 

Governmental agencies, law firms, corporations, and other mainstream and nonprofit groups recognize the far-reaching privacy implications of smart meters and the radio-off opt-out meter. Because they gather usage data in such a fine-grained manner (up to every 15 seconds), they are capable of tracking when you are home and the appliances you use and when you use them. This data can be sold to third parties, with mind-boggling consequences. The European Union has issued a stunning report on the far-reaching implications of this. Smart meter data has also been used by law enforcement in an attempt to catch criminals—unfortunately, the usage patterns of law-abiding individuals can be the same as those of law-breakers, with the result that police have broken into the homes of law-abiding citizens. See our Privacy page for more information.

Costs 

Your utility bills will go up. The utilities have made it clear that advanced (smart) meters will be used to bill time-of-use rates, which means you will pay more when demand is highest. Consumers Digest says: “Smart-meter conversion represents little more than a boondoggle that is being foisted on consumers by the politically influential companies that make the hardware and software that are required for the smart-meter conversion.” The former CEO of the Illinois utility ComEd agrees, as do the governors and attorney generals of a variety of states, including our own. See our Costs page for more information.

Who We Are 

The Smart Meter Education Network is a group of citizens who have come together to educate the community, work for legislation, and take legal and other action that will protect all citizens, especially children, the elderly, and the chronically ill. Smart meters affect all of us, and will affect our children and our planet for decades to come unless we take action now. 
People come to this issue for many different reasons—health impacts, environmental impacts, privacy issues, cyber-security, costs. Whatever your particular concerns, we welcome you to our community and hope that you will join us in our effort to preserve the health of our children, ourselves, and our environment. Click the links on the sidebars to learn more.

The Smart Meter Education Network is a non-partisan group dedicated to

  • educating citizens, legislators and activists about 
    • the health and environmental impacts of smart and digital meters
    • the privacy, hacking and other concerns relating to such technology
  • ensuring that customers have the right to have an analog meter on their home or business
  • supporting meaningful legislation that will address these concerns
  • taking legal and community action to preserve health, privacy, and the environment 
  • promoting safe alternatives to smart meters and AMI technology

All of these actions require money and volunteer effort. Please donate!! Your health is worth it. Call or email us to volunteer. See our What You Can Do page for more information on actions you can take.


Newsletter, Facebook—Stay Up to Date

Stay up to date by subscribing to our newsletter (it comes out every 1 to 4 weeks). We constantly update our website, so check back often. You can find time-sensitive actions to take under our “Take Action Now” tab. We also use Facebook to send out quick news updates. (While we understand the privacy concerns with Facebook, at this point in time it is a useful tool for us, and is a great way to spread the word about smart meters. If you only wish to use Facebook for access to our updates, you can get an account without revealing personal information—it’s all in what you choose to share, and you can give them any name or birth date you like.)
Our newsletter comes out every 1 to 4 weeks. It will keep you informed and tell you what actions you can take to fight smart meters. Note that most email programs will filter out our newsletter unless you adjust your email settings. Even though you may receive individual emails from us, when we send the newsletter out to a large group, the emails may be placed in a folder other than your inbox. This happened to us! We weren’t even getting our own newsletter. Then we did for a while, but suddenly gmail started putting it in our Spam folder again. Please make sure you look for emails from smartmetereducationnetwork@ gmail. com in your Promotions, Junk, or other folders. Please contact your email provider to learn how to adjust your settings, or search on the internet.

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