Protest SDG&E Rate Hikes, Smart Meters at PUC Meetings

Tired of high utility bills and inflation? Wait till you experience "time-of-use" rating! You haven't seen "nothin" yet! Your bills and costs are soon going to soar, with your new smart utility meters' help.

SDG&E is quietly requesting rate increases that will cause your utility bills to zoom upwards exponentially, especially during peak hours, with the capacity to severely disrupt your lives and budgets. This will occur, unless we, the ratepayers, help stop it by objecting at meetings with utility regulators, to be held in multiple locations in the county, this week. Involvement works!

Local nonprofit UCAN (UCAN.org) did a recent audit on SDG&E and found that they were already overcharging us, padding costs, and giving bonuses to execs right when the customers were suffering from a slowed economy. UCAN said that we should be given lower rates and refunds, not higher prices.

Yet now, for 2012, SDG&E is asking for a "general rate" increase of $168 million. We already pay higher rates that anywhere else in California or the nation! Will you willingly pay even more???  If not, attend these meetings and speak out.

Did you know that these same new, wireless "smart" meters are reportedly causing serious health problems; intrude on your privacy, tracking your habits and movements inside your home, collected as data that can be misused; can cause fires, explosions, damage to appliances; and are described as threats to our nation's security?

Attend one or more local convenient CPUC meetings this coming week and speak to administrative law judges and commissioners who have the power to do something about these issues!

They say they have not heard enough from Southern Californians. Voice your protests against higher rates and the dangerous new price-gouging smart meters. Bring your friends, family, and neighbors, invite local media, videotape these public proceedings, and upload to YouTube. Let the CPUC know we care and won't stand for abuses of our rights to be safe, secure, and pay reasonable costs for utilities.

The hearings will be held twice daily, at both 2pm and 7pm, starting Monday, Oct. 10th, at four convenient locations:
 
• San Diego: Monday, October 10, 2011 (Al Bahr Shriners Center, 5440 Kearny Mesa Road, San Diego 92111)

• Chula Vista: Tuesday, October 11, 2011 (Comfort Inn & Suites, 632 E. St., Chula Vista 91910)

• El Cajon: Wednesday, October 12, 2011 (El Cajon City Hall Council Chambers, 200 E. Main St, El Cajon 92020)

• Oceanside: Thursday, October 13, 2011 (Civic Center Library, 330 N. Coast Highway, Oceanside 92054)

More information about UCAN's expert findings can be viewed at

http://eastcountymagazine.org/node/7369 East County Magazine and

http://www.ucan.org/energy/electricity/general_rate_case_2012/ucan_testimony_sdge_grc_2012

I commend East County Magazine and UCAN for exposing yet another deceit by SDG&E in its never-ending efforts to turn a larger profit at our expense.

What the article (and UCAN, apparently) doesn't mention is the time-of-use rating that will be implemented with the dangerous, radiation-emitting smart meters that SDG&E installed on all of our homes and businesses recently.

You see, SDG&E can't wait to use these new meters to increase rates during peak hours. Instead of paying a flat rate round the clock, these "smart" meters can detect when you are using the electricity and charge you differently for each segment of the day and night.

When this is implemented, and it is coming fast in 2012, like an invisible train bearing down on us on the tracks, we will not only have higher bills because we have to pay for the smart meters and smart grid ("the better to gouge you with") but we'll have to pay extra to heat or cool our homes or businesses during the day and early evening.

Cheapest will be middle of the night, and that is when you will newly be motivated to get up and do your laundry, cook, or vacuum. Sound wonderful? Your life will be very costly to maintain as it is now, come time-of-use billing. In fact, some have found, in other places where the smart meters have been for a longer time, that they are paying two to ten times higher bills, monthly. Oh, yes, do they have plans for you!

So read up on this and don't stay in your homes when these meetings occur. Attend and let the CPUC know that you will not tolerate being gouged like this, nor exposed to dangerous radiation, that you want them not to approve the rate increases and to remove the wireless smart meters from all our homes.

Tell the CPUC you don't want more problems, we don't need the disabled or elderly people home during the day to be afraid to use electricity for fear of impossible bills. We don't need our costs to rise. Who is against this type of billing?

AARP (American Association of Retired Persons); Ralph Nader's Public Citizen; TURN, another CA utility watchdog group (http://turn.org), and Center for Electrosmog Prevention www.electrosmogprevention.org, a La Mesa nonprofit representing ratepayers and the public.

For more reading on smart metering and time-of-use rating, enter "time-of-use billing smart meters" into a search engine. Enter "time-of-use billing smart meters problems" into a search engine for articles on the havoc this type of billing has caused.

Attend these meetings - your healthy, safe, affordable future (and that of your family) depends on it! See you there!

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