Smart Meters are being installed throughout the DC Metro Area.
Smart Meters have generated much controversy from health concerns to privacy concerns. If you live in Maryland the Public Service Commission has given utility customers the option to opt out. Customers are required to make opt-out requests in writing. Please submit your request online or by mailing the request to the address below.
Pepco Opt Out
online opt out
Letters should be sent to:
701 9th St. NW
Mail Stop EP7642
Washington, DC 20068
BGE Opt Out
Email deferral requests to smartmeterdeferral@bge.com
Letters should be sent to:
Smart Meter Deferral BGE
P.O. Box 1475
Baltimore, MD 21203
If you have not received a smart meter you may opt out. If you have received a smart meter you may have the smart meter replaced with an older model.
About Smart Meters
What is a smart meter?
A smart meter is a digital meter that records your usage in hourly increments. The new meter and the new communication system we are installing also allows for two-way communication – the meter sends signals to your utility company and the utility company can communicate with the meter.
What is the purpose of a smart meter?
Smart meters are a crucial part in energy conservation. Smart meters help customers make better informed decisions about their energy use. Smart meters are designed to offer utilities and their customers a number of key benefits. These include better insight into customer usage, as well as outage detection and improved customer service.
•Smart meters enable users to view their home or small business electricity use in easy to read graphs. Armed with a better understanding of your energy use, you can make informed decisions on how to manage and control your electricity consumption.
•Smart meters will ensure that your energy bill is based on your actual, rather than estimated use.
•Smart meters will reduce the need for meter readers to come to your home.
Opportunities to save money
•While detailed data is no guarantee for saving energy or money, smart meters give you the power to review and evaluate your use of energy and take control of the things you can change.
•Smart meters provide outage detection by Pepco if an outage occurs.
How much research has been done on the health effects of smart meters?
Over the past decade, there have been hundreds of studies in this area. Most smart meters use very low-power radio frequency (RF) fields to transmit power usage data. The RF fields used by smart meters are in the same frequency ranges used by cellular and cordless phones, but are at much lower power and typically occur for less than a total of one minute per day. There is a large body of scientific research on RF fields and health. Federal Regulatory agencies have conducted detailed reviews of this scientific research and have not found any reliable basis to conclude that there are health risks related to RF exposures at levels below recognized standards.
Is there a health risk from smart meters?
Scientific research has been conducted on radio-frequency (RF) fields and health for several decades. Recent research has focused on RF at cellular phone frequencies. This body of research has been reviewed by many public health and regulatory agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI). None of these organizations has found that the RF signals from smart meters cause or contribute to any adverse health effects. For example, a recent review by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded that while some studies suggest a possible relationship to cancer based on prolonged use of cell phones, RF exposures from cell phones cannot be considered an actual cause of cancer or even a probable cause. IARC also found that there was inadequate scientific evidence of any cancer risk due to RF fields from environmental sources, such as cell phone towers and wireless networks. WHO has further emphasized that “no adverse health effects have been established as being caused by mobile phone use.”