The Smart Meters are coming. If you don’t have one installed in your home, you will soon. They are already in parts of Texas and California and are part a new nation-wide program called “Smart Grid.” Heck they’re here. For those of us who do not have one yet be prepared to pay your power company for these mandatory meter replacements AND their installation.

And no, they are not perfect. I found the consumer comments here incentive to investigate further.

Then there is the fact that the smart meters will communicate a burst of data wirelessly every fifteen minutes to local microwave relay stations.

Given the growing momentum in Maine and San Francisco to put cancer warnings on cell phones, I cannot help but wonder about the safety, wisdom, or liability, of living with a 24/7 microwave transmitter attached to our residences, schools, and places of business.

I would like to see if there are any engineering students out there that can run a model for what the overlapping resonant clouds of microwave energy in neighborhoods would look like?

Of course we will be billed at a higher rate for using electricity during times of peak demand. And of course we will be told that we can buy electricity to run our appliances during off-peak hours. To take full advantage of these “savings” we will all need to buy the next generation of “smart appliances” which can be set on timers to run during these off times.

Another way to look at this is that even more of your money will need to be spent to run on the timetable of yet another corporate parasite sucking the money out of your life – from yet an entirely unanticipated direction.

The power companies have not changed their operational model since Westinghouse (using Tesla’s patents) beat Edison for the Niagra Falls contract in 1893. The idea then (as it is now) was to generate electricity in areas far from centers of consumption, then distribute (and meter!) electrical power to customers.

You have probably noticed by now that you have been using less electricity, gasoline, postage, and water – and paying more per respective unit of measure. While the post office loves to point to the internet and free email as a problem for them, the fact of the matter is they are delivering MORE articles than ever. Energy companies (oil/gas and electric) are owned by multi-national corporations who are here to suck your blood and pump up corporate profits on a near Biblical scale.

There is a newer model for the conversion and distribution of energy. In the same way that the personal computer has brought power to the individual, so too can energy from the sun (via solar cells and wind turbines) be converted at point of use.

Look at Berkeley’s program. Why won’t more municipalities or the Feds put tax incentives in place to achieve energy independence? In the long run it would have to be cheaper to roll out than saving AIG.

Unless of course it is that bribery and corruption prevent our elected representatives from acting in the best, long-term interests of the republic?