DALLAS — Skeptics of Oncor's new smart meters are taking their concerns door-to-door. Their efforts come as the results from the first side-by-side meter comparisons have been released.
Oncor has installed 760,000 smart meters so far in North Texas and wants the meters installed in nearly 3.5 million homes by 2012. The utility company has already admitted to incorrectly installing about 7,000 meters.
The first round of side-by-side meter comparisons show there are some small discrepancies between some old and new meters.
Ree Wattner is among those who has taken her outrage at Oncor to the streets. She is going door-to-door, looking for homeowners with new meters.
"Has it gone down, gone up?" she asked one resident, who claimed their bill has gone up 200 percent.
Wattner is rallying support for her grassroots effort to fight the new digital meters being installed on homes across North Texas.
"We need thousands of people, and I know that's how many people it's been affecting," she said. "Now, we got to find them."
Oncor recently installed both new and old meters on 12 homes in the Killeen area. After two weeks of usage, five of the meters showed tiny discrepancies..
On some, the old meter charged more and on others it was the new smart meter that overcharged. In all cases, the difference was no more than a few pennies worth of electricity.
Oncor said the results show their meters are sound.
"If we had found any indication it was with the meter we would be the first ones to say, 'Let's have a moratorium; Let's stop installation,'" said Chris Schein, an Oncor spokesman. "We have not found any data to indicate there is a problem with these meters."
However, Wattner said she isn't satisfied. "The side-by-side testing is more of the dog and pony show," she said.
The utility company continues to point to unusually cold weather for the high bills. But, in thousands of cases, mistakes were made - not with the meter, but with the workers installing them.
"Oncor made the biggest mistake, not me," said Trina Hall.
Hall said Oncor admitted its workers misread her old meter when they were swapped and overcharged her nearly $350 since December.
"I'm glad I got the credit, but how many more people out there have same problem [and are] not getting corrections?" she said.
Oncor has refused to release exactly how many bills it has credited, only using an estimate of about one percent of its meters.
Protests are planned, including a march onto Oncor's headquarters Thursday in downtown Dallas.
Texas isn't alone in its smart meter woes. California energy regulators are planning to investigate a smart meter rollout there. Pacific Gas and Electric has received complaints about inaccuracies. In that case, the company blames hot weather and rate increases for large bills.
E-mail: jbetz@wfaa.com
