5,000 Smart Meters Explode After Truck Crashes Into Utility Pole

So, apparently homes linked up to the "smart" grid have the potential to burst into flames at any given moment:

CBS Sacramento

STOCKTON (CBS13) — A power surge left thousands without power in Stockton on Monday after smart meters on their homes exploded.

...

PG&E says a dump truck crashed near its Alpine substation on Arch Road. When the truck hit the utility pole, the top wire fell onto the bottom wire, creating a power surge.

Oops?



Activist Post

Despite the fact that these meters have been known to burst into flames from time-to-time, and aside from the fact that they continuously expose occupants to electromagnetic radiation, and despite the fact that they can be used to continually collect data on everyone who lives in a home (the newer versions can send signals from individual outlets in a home every 15 seconds to be later broken down with disaggregation algorithms)… now this.

...

So now, instead of just having to worry about continual data collection and surveillance, or the negative health effects of electromagnetic frequency exposure, or the potential for a random house fire, there’s also the possibility of a truck randomly hitting a pole and causing your smart meter to straight up explode, also damaging your home and leaving you and yours without power for at least a week, maybe longer until it can be replaced… to possibly happen all over again?

How “smart” is this smart grid again?

Link to Video

These things are blowing up on the sides of peoples' houses... and they're just going to replace them? No comment on what can be done to prevent this from happening again (preferably by not using one)? That's just the way it is.

"Gee, we're sorry the side of your house exploded. Here's a new meter. Sleep tight."

Green technology, folks. The ultimate oxymoron.

Stockton Residents Wonder Who Will Pay After Power Surge Damages Appliances

Disturbing... imagine this happening in a rural area, away from sight in the heat of summer when everything is flammable.

Here we got to keep our old meters at the cost of an extra $32.50 per month on top of the bill. Its kind of extortion, paying extra for nothing new but many people pay on principle. Oddly. its starting to appear like those who accepted the smart meter are paying even higher bills which doesn't make sense either.

a reply to: NthOther

Slightly misleading title, as 5000 people were left without power after the crash, but now all power has been restored to all but 'hundreds'. So it wasn't 5000 smart meters.

m.kcra.com...

They don't say if the remaining hundreds are all smart meters or not.

originally posted by: Chadwickus

Slightly misleading title, as 5000 people were left without power after the crash, but now all power has been restored to all but 'hundreds'. So it wasn't 5000 smart meters.

m.kcra.com...

They don't say if the remaining hundreds are all smart meters or not.

Ok, so hundreds then, not thousands.

Make you feel any safer?

A power surge could destroy any meter/device. And they don't constantly expose you to EMR. Usual hippy nonsense from people that have ZERO understanding of physics, radio technology and how these meters work. Go and live in a cave guys, the present isn't for you.

a reply to: NthOther

I felt pretty safe anyway as I live in Australia.

Just trying to bring facts, sorry if that offends.

a reply to: AgentSmith

Well we're surrounded by electromagnetic radiation all the time. Visible light, radio waves.

I don't think a cave would help lol

originally posted by: AgentSmith

Go and live in a cave guys, the present isn't for you.

I tried. The government evicted me.

If you're going to force people to be a part of your bulls# society, don't be surprised by the fact that we don't trust anything you do or say.

a reply to: NthOther

If a high voltage line is dislodged and comes down onto the low voltage mains it typically can blow up anything in your home .Usually there is no explosion as such but depending on substation setting it might have 2 or 3 attempts to keep feeding before a circuit breaker locks out . Same thing can happen with lightning . Smart meter or toaster , electricity doesn't care .

There's a couple of possibilities and I've seen both of them happen due to a vehicle hitting a power pole.
The first applies to 3 phase LV distribution mains where the neutral breaks and falls across an active phase. What happens is everyone connected to that particular phase experiences a sudden increase in voltage by a factor of root(3) or 1.732 which is beyond the design limit of appliances and lamps but doesn't necessarily cause violent explosions.
The 2nd and worst is when the pole has LV distribution and and HV feeder on top. A HV conductor breaks from it's insulator and falls on the LV mains below it and this is catastrophic causing anything connected to the affected phase to self destruct instantly when the voltage rises to as much as 10x normal. Not just smart meters but normal meters, TVs, fridges, water heaters, everything on that phase will be toast and covered by insurance and/or reimbursement and repair by the company responsible for the mains.

Smart meters are no more susceptible than any other electrical device under these conditions.

I've never heard of anything like this happening, but apparently it's not so weird for hundreds of the things to explode because some drunk asshole crashed into a pole.

Still...

I dunno. It's just odd.

a reply to: Pilgrum

1.732

Someone paid attention at linesman school .

What company or state do you work for .

240 x 1.732 = 415

originally posted by: Chadwickus
a reply to: NthOther

Slightly misleading title, as 5000 people were left without power after the crash, but now all power has been restored to all but 'hundreds'. So it wasn't 5000 smart meters.

m.kcra.com...

They don't say if the remaining hundreds are all smart meters or not.

Well, this article says(i "bolded" some portions and reduced the number of paragraphs because 1 sentence is not a paragraph):

Stockton Smart Meters Explode After Truck Causes Power Surge


STOCKTON (CBS13) — A power surge left thousands without power in Stockton on Monday after smart meters on their homes exploded.The explosions started at around 8:30 a.m. after a truck crashed into a utility pole, causing a surge. When the customers in more than 5,000 homes get their power back on will depend on how badly damaged their meters are.


Neighbors in the South Stockton area described it as a large pop, a bomb going off, and strong enough to shake a house.

So, unless this CBS13 article is in error, yes, it was 5000 smart meters that exploded. Actually it says "more than 5000". It's just that most of them, all but "hundreds" have been repaired already. As the article states, when they get their power back on depends on how badly damaged. So clearly, it would be fair to infer that hundreds were more severely damaged than the rest of them, which still exploded, by the way.

And this thread isn't even about people being inconvenienced by having to deal with the loss of electricity to their homes. It's about Smart Meters exploding. Like bombs. Over 5000 of them. I could care less if the majority have been restored to their previous state of being a ticking time bomb waiting to detonate everytime you walk past it...

And if the original "over 5000" that exploded were Smart Meters, it seems painfully obvious that the remaining "hundreds" yet to be restored to their ticking time bomb status are indeed Smart Meters as they were included in the original "over 5000 smart meters" that exploded!

Do you mean to imply that there is a chance that the explosions somehow magically transformed some of the over 5000 Smart Meters into some other type of meter other than just an exploded Smart Meter? (Yes, an exploded Smart Meter is different in some ways to an intact Smart Meter, but it is still a form of Smart Meter.) Or are you simply insinuating that the information in the above quoted CBS13 article is incorrect? I'd love to be enlightened on this particular matter, if you could be so kind...

I tried really hard to be less of a Richard Noggin this time. As compared to our last interaction, as described by you. (you called me a dick)

a reply to: NthOther

A guy here tried living in a cave 5 miles from the nearest road. He was evicted on the grounds that he might interfere with archeological evidence of human use of the cave. Are the archeologists of the future going to complain because he wasn't allowed to leave evidence for them?

We had a smart meter that transmitted data on solar panel power performance to the housing authority who were using us as a solar farm. The generated electricity that we didn't use as it was produced was sold to the grid. I covered the meter in a folded mylar blanket. Everyone who stood in front of it and moved the mylar aside reported feeling a noticeable difference regardless of their views on smart meter dangers. I've since found I can hire EMF meters locally. I wish I'd known that then so I could back up feeling with proper scientific measurement.

Your green technology comment suggests you have experience. The biggest joke about these particular solar panels is that we were given them so we wouldn't complain about the higher electricity bills from the 'green' ground source heat pumps which were advertised as saving electricity. I honestly believe large numbers of the housing authority staff who fell for the green heating scam must be on coc aine. I see no other way they could be so incredibly stupid.

To the best of my knowledge every ground source heat pump they installed failed within a small fraction of the advertised lifespan. The advertised lifespan is what makes them 'green'. The truth is a whole load of yuppie entrepreneur conmen have jumped on the fake green bandwagon.

I could go on about my experience with green technology but I'd probably have a stroke.

Nice thread, but it's given me a strange desire to go out and buy a dump truck.

Here a start of a small revolt here in Ontario Canada

Enough Is Enough

and here

FaceBook

Ontario hydro cost

originally posted by: hutch622
a reply to: NthOther

If a high voltage line is dislodged and comes down onto the low voltage mains it typically can blow up anything in your home .Usually there is no explosion as such but depending on substation setting it might have 2 or 3 attempts to keep feeding before a circuit breaker locks out . Same thing can happen with lightning . Smart meter or toaster , electricity doesn't care .

Cool. I wonder how many toasters and other things exploded, and why the news stations only mentioned Smart Meters? Must be some mind of across-the-board media bias against Smart Meters... Otherwise, what was it about this power surge that targeted Smart Meters only?

We've had people crash into power poles in my neighborhood before. The only thing that has EVER exploded was the transformer at the top of the pole. I've never heard of a toaster exploding like a bomb in my life. Let alone exploding with a force strong enough to shake a house.

originally posted by: igloo
Disturbing... imagine this happening in a rural area, away from sight in the heat of summer when everything is flammable.

Here we got to keep our old meters at the cost of an extra $32.50 per month on top of the bill. Its kind of extortion, paying extra for nothing new but many people pay on principle. Oddly. its starting to appear like those who accepted the smart meter are paying even higher bills which doesn't make sense either.

Yeah, apparently they forgot to tell us that the reason they are called "smart" meters is because its a clever way to rip of unsuspecting citizens. Someone smart must've dreamed up this scheme. Unscrupulous, but smart.

originally posted by: Trillium
Here a start of a small revolt here in Ontario Canada

Enough Is Enough

and here

FaceBook

Ontario hydro cost

That is an eye opening link. (Enough Is Enough) These folks are victims of extortion, plain and simple. Loved this individual's profile pic:

originally posted by: 3n19m470

Cool. I wonder how many toasters and other things exploded, and why the news stations only mentioned Smart Meters? Must be some mind of across-the-board media bias against Smart Meters... Otherwise, what was it about this power surge that targeted Smart Meters only?

The first answer is simply the press sensationalising things for a susceptable audience, strange as might appear and it's good for ratings.

And the special thing about electricity meters that makes them different to toasters is that they are fully enclosed with just enough breathing ability to cope with ambient temperature variations (to limit the ingress of water). A sudden evolution of gas in the enclosure due to components vaporizing due to arcing would produce enough overpressure to make them 'explode' just as the pics show. Those meters in the pics had tempered glass covers so they would have indeed gone off with a bang.

Expect extraordinary outcomes in extraordinary circumstances

a reply to: 3n19m470

It's pretty simple, watch the video in the link.

Bit more detailed than the CBS article, and there are other local affiliates that also go i to. Ore detail.

Such as this one:

www.news10.net...

What I'm implying, and what also appears as fact, is that the statement of "over 5000 smart meters exploding" is grossly inaccurate.

I also state that it's still unclear if the "hundreds" were all smart meters, probably are though, since those hundreds (nearly 500) are still without power, so, logically the meters that exploded probably haven't all been fixed yet..

And yes, it's amazing how the news portrays things isn't it? It's called hyperbole, 5000 exploded? No. Hundreds? Maybe.

The question is, were the ones that exploded all smart meters? Or were they in an area that got a larger surge.

Reading more than just the CBS article suggests that only certain streets had exploding meters, like here..

t.recordnet.com...