/ By


“The
Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission on Thursday cracked open the door for
opponents of the state’s compulsory smart-meter deployment policy, allowing a
hearing on a customer’s complaint that the installation of a wireless meter
outside her bedroom caused her to get sick.”
The Philadelphia
Inquirer‘s Andrew Maykuth reports:
In a 4-1 vote, the PUC rejected Peco Energy Co.’s petition to
prevent an administrative law judge from hearing the health complaints of Susan
Kreider, a registered nurse who said she suffered “deleterious health
effects” after Peco installed the new meter on her Germantown home in 2013.
The commission has previously declined to hear scores of
complaints from smart-meter opponents, who object to the devices on privacy,
safety, or health grounds. Utilities say they are required to install the
meters to comply with Act 129, a 2008 energy-conservation law that ordered all
Pennsylvania utilities to deploy the devices.
Kreider’s complaint was different, the PUC said, because she said
she could produce medical documentation showing that the electromagnetic
radiation from the meter caused her to get sick. The meter violates the state’s
public utility code requiring utilities to provide “safe and
reasonable” service, she has maintained.
“To ignore claims relating to the safety of smart meters
would be an abdication of our duties and responsibilities under . . . the
code,” the PUC said in its order Thursday.

Read the full story here

Verified by MonsterInsights