You can find plenty of claims online that smart meters are a health hazard or part of a sinister government conspiracy. I’ve had a look and found these claims to be false.
Are Smart Meters Bad For Your Health?
Smart meters are not dangerous. I’m not saying they’re safe to swallow, or it wouldn’t hurt if someone tried to use one to “blunt object” you to death in a real-life remake of Murder She Wrote. I’m talking about electromagnetic radiation. The levels they emit are harmless, or at least are of so little consequence that I am completely confident it’s not worth worrying about in a world full of obvious dangers, such as Murder She Wrote’s Jessica Fletcher.
But not everyone agrees with me. My plan was to provide links to claims saying I’m wrong, but as I looked them up, I wondered if I should, because many were clearly made by people nuttier than a lumpy chocolate bar. I couldn’t help but feel it could be cruel to publicly point out their claims hold as much water as a dam wall made of fairy floss. On the other hand, one of the people against smart meters is a Queensland Senator, so it is in the public interest to point out he’s wrong.
The first example is from the appropriately named “conspiracybot”:
It says smart meters are extremely dangerous and the World Health Organisation has classified them as a possible carcinogen. But you’d think that if they were extremely dangerous, the WHO would get their act together and say, “Hell yeah, smart meters are dangerous! They give you Turbo-granny-cancer!” But they don’t actually say smart meters are a possible carcinogen. Instead, what they do say is that Electromagnetic Fields (EMF) are a possible carcinogen, which isn’t quite the same thing. Fortunately, there’s no good evidence that EMF exposure from mobile phones is dangerous, and smart meters expose you to far less. This is because you don’t walk around with a smart meter pressed against your head. Meanwhile, one thing the WHO says is definitely a carcinogen is alcohol, and we still have plenty of that in Australia.
The link also says in all-caps, “THE WEAPON IS THE SMART METER”, which I don’t think is correct, unless you’re getting Murder She Wroted with one.
The video is of Queensland Senator Malcolm Roberts. In it, he doesn’t say smart meters are dangerous, but he does claim that in regional Queensland, “…households are put on economy tariffs and can only use power for about 8 hours a day.” This statement is so nutty there’s no chocolate bar in the entire world lumpy enough to contain it. My parents have one of these economy tariffs and they have more than 8 hours of grid electricity per day. It’s for their hot water system. These tariffs were first introduced in Brisbane in 1953, two years before Senator Malcolm Roberts was born. In all that time, they have never caused a home to only be supplied with power for about 8 hours a day. I realise he didn’t emigrate here until 1964, but I still think he’s had enough time to pick up how Queensland economy tariffs work.
The Stop Smart Meters Australia page:
This is your one-stop shop for everything anti-smart meter. If you want to hate on smart meters, I can’t recommend it highly enough. But if you’re into realistic threat assessment, I can’t recommend it lowly enough.
EMF Protection For Sale:
However, if you do think smart meters are a threat, and want to use an online shop, there are people happy to take your money in return for protective gear, such as a website called Aus Security Products, which avoids claiming that smart meters are dangerous, but goes ahead and says you should consider shielding solutions anyway, which they will sell you.
This could be yours for just $285 plus $12 shipping! (Note you can get a roll of aluminium foil from Woolies for $1.90. Personally, I recommend a biscuit tin — because it comes with biscuits.)
With the right shielding, such as a Faraday cage, you can block all EMF from a smart meter. But this won’t necessarily be without consequences. It’s a good way to get a technician to check why your smart meter has failed, and they may not be impressed when they find out it’s your fault and not the meter’s. Expect to be hit with a hefty service charge.
This approach below is a bit more magical:
It is true that if you hang a copper band with quartz crystals woven into it from your smart meter, the EMF emissions won’t harm you. But it’s also true if you don’t. While the person who made this could honestly believe they are helping people, I’m still shocked by how susceptible people are to superstition in this modern day and age. I’m also shocked by how it looks exactly like the charm my shaman sold me to protect against serial killers…
Jessica Fletcher: Either she’s so unlucky she just happened to stumble across 286 murders, or something else was going on…
Making Your Smart Meter Dumb Is Expensive
If your electricity retailer wants to install a smart meter, or you already have one, you may have the option of having its communication ability deactivated. Because it will no longer use the mobile phone network to send or receive signals, this can reduce your exposure to electromagnetic radiation, but you’ll also be hit with potentially hefty manual meter reading fees.
Because money costs money, my advice is, don’t do it. Unless you sleep inside a switchboard box — which probably isn’t out of the question given the state of Australia’s property market — you’ll be exposed to far more electromagnetic radiation from using a smartphone than you’ll ever get from a smart meter. Exposure from typical smartphone use is several hundred to several thousand times greater, so I say it’s not worth worrying about. But if you’ve already limited your electromagnetic wave exposure by binning your mobile phone, then I salute your consistency. And be sure to tell whoever printed this out for you that you appreciate their efforts.
While people have genuine concerns about EMF, I’m being genuine when I say there’s no good evidence that emission levels allowed in Australia are harmful, and the amount we receive from smart meters is trivial compared to mobile phones and other devices.  Unless you’re willing to cut electricity out of your life, there’s no real point in not having a smart meter. And if you do ditch electricity, you won’t need one anyway.
Smart Meters & Dumb Decisions
A more reasonable concern behind anti-smart meter campaigns is the fear that electricity retailers or grid operators will use them to screw people over.
Depending on location, in the past, getting a smart meter could cause you to be kicked off your flat tariff and forced onto a time-of-use or demand tariff, regardless of whether or not you wanted one. This sometimes resulted in old grannies being dumped onto demand tariffs and being hit with hefty demand charges without understanding why.
Because this rotten behaviour pissed people off and caused them to hate smart meters, the AEMC worked to change the rules so households can remain on a flat tariff after having a smart meter installed. In practice, you can use a flat tariff with a smart meter provided electricity retailers offer them, and at this time, they appear available throughout Australia. This is likely to continue because electricity retailers don’t really care what tariff you’re on as long as they’re making money.
Universal smart meter coverage is coming, although not everyone will be happy about it. But most of the smart meter hatred out there is not due to the meters themselves, which are pretty harmless, but is instead the result of dumb decisions made about them. These include:
- Australia’s first smart meter rollout in Victoria promised lower costs, but charged households for them upfront.
- Kicking people off flat tariffs against their will when smart meters were installed.
- Forcing people to pay fees or higher daily supply charges when a smart meter is installed, even though they lower costs for everyone.
That third point is still going on. If the AEMC wants their accelerated smart meter rollout to go well, they should consider changing it.
Once AEMC gets the 100% smart meter penetration achievement, it will unlock this costume for their Chief Executive to wear.
Smart Meters Can Have Dumb Fees
If your electricity retailer contacts you out of the blue and says they want to replace your old meter with a smart one, you won’t have to pay a thing. At least, not upfront. When an electricity retailer initiates a changeover to a smart meter, it’s usually free. But in Queensland, you may have your daily supply charge bumped up by around an extra $20 a year.
If you get electrical work done that results in a meter changeover, such as getting solar — whether or not batteries are included — then you can be hit with upfront fees. These vary by location, but the meter changeover fee usually isn’t too bad, as you don’t have to pay the full cost.  Usually, it’s under $100. You could also be hit with a special meter read fee, but as you’re only paying for one, it’s not too bad. For a straightforward meter changeover, most Australians should get away with under $150 of damage. But when things aren’t straightforward, it can get expensive.
Charges for 3-phase meter installations can be higher, and if additional work needs to be done, you can also be charged for it. If the workers can’t access the meter location because the gate was locked or you have a scary chihuahua, you can be hit with a wasted visit fee. And if your switchboard is ancient or full of asbestos, it will need to be replaced (the switchboard, not the asbestos), which can set you back a couple of thousand.
What If I Don’t Want A Smart Meter?
If you don’t want a smart meter, you have a problem because everybody is supposed to get one. The AEMC is going for universal coverage, which is very ambitious, given they haven’t even put a smart meter on the moon yet. But if you’re on-grid in Australia, your two main options if you don’t want one are…
- Go off-grid
- Get a smart meter, but request its communication capability be turned off.
Going off-grid is the nuclear option. This is because it’s a serious step and because you’ll be running your home almost entirely off nuclear fusion — which is what powers the sun. It’s not a cheap option. You’ll have to pay for a sizeable solar, battery, and generator system, and if you go off-grid first, you won’t be able to use the federal battery rebate. You’ll also have the drawbacks of not being able to receive a solar feed-in tariff or Virtual Power Plant payments. It’s also less environmentally friendly than an on-grid system, because you won’t be able to send your surplus clean energy into the grid for others to use. But, provided you hate smart meters as much as you love being bad with money, it can be done.
Going off-grid may suit those who despise smart meters for having the audacity to not just record how much electricity they use but also when. But if you’re not worried about that and your concern is instead smart meters’ ability to transmit and receive, it is possible to ask your electricity retailer to disable your smart meter’s communication capabilities.
This will stop your smart meter from using the mobile phone network, but your retailer can charge you for special manual meter reads. You could be charged a fee each time the meter is read, or the cost could be added onto the daily supply charge on your bills.  Amounts vary by location, but special meter reads can be over $40 each. With one each quarter, you could be charged over $160 per year.
Just make sure you’re not overcharged for special meter reads, because in reality, they’re rarely read each quarter. Usually it’s once every six months and electricity retailers can get away with less than that, because all they’re required to do is make a “reasonable effort” to read them at least once a year. So if you do have to pay special meter reading charges, check if you have to pay them every quarter, no matter what, or only when the meter is actually read.
Smart Meters Aren’t Dangerous
Electromagnetic radiation, such as radio waves and microwaves, can kill you. In some physics labs, there are devices that can expose you to so much EMF you will convulse and die within hours, or possibly seconds if they don’t use eco mode. Also, if you’re warming yourself in front of a microwave communications dish while it’s transmitting “Murder She Wrote” and Jessica Fletcher takes the opportunity to turn it up to full power and pin the blame on someone else, that’s not going to end well for you. (While the transmission probably won’t kill you, once you’re in Jessica’s sights, your days are numbered.)
But this is completely different from the EMF output from a smart meter. There’s no good evidence that EMF from mobile phones is dangerous, and having a smart meter will expose you to perhaps one thousandth as much. While you might decide you’d rather be safe than sorry, to be consistent, you’d have to get rid of every electronic or electrical device, as they all give off EMF in one form or another. So my advice is to just chill and not worry about it.
If, after getting one, you still can’t shake the feeling that there’s a chance there’s some danger, then take the money you save from not having to pay for special meter reads and potentially from having a time-of-use tariff, and buy yourself some buckets of alcohol and packets of cigarettes. Then you can relax, because you can be 100% certain they’re bad for you.
For more on smart meters, read my recent piece on how you’ll need one to cash in on free daytime electricity.
About Ronald Brakels
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