Smart Meters and Mesh Networks: What They Can (and Can’t) Do

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Smart meters have become a standard part of modern electrical infrastructure in many parts of the United States. These digital devices, often connected through mesh radio networks as part of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), replaced traditional analog meters that only tracked monthly totals. While they offer benefits for utilities and sometimes customers, they’ve also raised questions about privacy, surveillance, and electromagnetic fields (EMF).

Can Utilities Tell How Many Breakers Are in Your Panel?

One common concern is whether smart meters give utilities detailed insight into a home’s internal wiring — specifically, the number of circuit breakers in the electrical panel.

The short answer is no. Standard smart meters are installed at the service entrance (usually on the exterior wall of your house) and only measure the total electricity flowing into the entire home. They do not have sensors inside your breaker box and cannot directly count individual circuits.

Even advanced analysis techniques like Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM), which tries to identify appliance usage from overall load patterns, focuses on major devices (refrigerators, air conditioners, etc.), not the raw number of breakers. Factors like harmonics, electrical noise, or frequency variations primarily reflect what’s plugged in and running, not how many switches exist downstream.

Utilities might make very rough inferences about home size or complexity from peak usage patterns, but they cannot accurately determine your exact breaker count through the meter alone.

What Data Do Smart Meters Actually Collect?

Mesh network smart meters collect significantly more information than old analog meters. Typical data includes:

  • Consumption data: Kilowatt-hour (kWh) usage, often recorded in 15-, 30-, or 60-minute intervals. This creates a detailed daily load profile.
  • Power quality metrics: Voltage levels, fluctuations, power factor, and sometimes harmonics.
  • Service events: Power outages, restorations, and tamper alerts.
  • Diagnostic information: Basic system health and, in some cases, net metering data for homes with solar.

This information helps utilities improve billing accuracy, detect outages faster, manage grid load, and plan infrastructure upgrades. High-resolution usage data can sometimes reveal broad behavioral patterns (e.g., when people are typically home), but it stops well short of appliance-level or room-by-room spying without additional customer-installed devices.

Two-Way Communication: Transmit and Receive

Unlike old meters that only accumulated readings, modern smart meters are two-way devices:

  • They transmit usage and diagnostic data to the utility, usually in short bursts several times per day via a mesh radio network. Your meter often relays data from neighboring homes as well.
  • They can receive commands from the utility, such as firmware updates, time synchronization, remote connect/disconnect (on capable models), or demand-response signals for time-of-use pricing.

The mesh network uses low-power radio frequencies (often around 900 MHz) with intermittent transmissions, keeping overall radio activity relatively low.

EMF Concerns: How Do Smart Meters Compare to Power Lines?

Many homeowners worry about electromagnetic fields from the meter itself. Here’s the reality:

  • Low-frequency (60 Hz) fields — These are primarily created by the current flowing through the thick incoming service cables (power lines). The smart meter itself adds very little because it’s simply in line with those cables. Magnetic field strength depends mostly on how much electricity you’re using.
  • Radiofrequency (RF) fields — This is the main new addition from the wireless transmitter. Emissions are intermittent and low-power, typically far below regulatory safety limits and often lower than everyday sources like cell phones or Wi-Fi routers.

Overall, the incoming power lines usually dominate the EMF profile near the meter. The device does not create a dramatically stronger field than the service entrance cables it connects to. Maintaining a few feet of distance further reduces exposure.

Bottom Line

Smart meters provide utilities with much better visibility into whole-house electricity use than analog meters ever did, enabling smarter grid management. However, they do not offer X-ray vision into your breaker panel, individual circuits, or personal habits beyond broad consumption patterns.

If you’re concerned about privacy, check your utility’s data policy — many allow opt-outs (sometimes with fees) or provide basic usage portals. For detailed circuit-level monitoring in your own home, consider installing a dedicated energy monitor (like Emporia Vue or Sense) at your electrical panel.

Smart meters are a trade-off: greater convenience and grid efficiency versus modestly increased data collection. Understanding their actual capabilities helps separate real concerns from common misconceptions.

Is Columbia Gas of Ohio ripping you off? – Price gouging without explanation

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Price gouging without explanation.

WHAT REALLY BURNS ME!

Author: Thomas Domich

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a column speaking about Columbia gas of Ohio.

In that piece I was all over the place and I want very clear about what was going on.
So I’m writing again to clarify what I believe to be a money grab, and I believe that Columbia gas is ripping us all off.

I’m going to give you the facts as I know them and you decide.

note: I’ve asked Columbia gas directly for answers or comments about what I’m going to tell you, to no avail.

_________________

I’m sure you’ve all noticed that every winter your gas bill goes up, and it’s to be expected, due to the colder season. but how many of you have noticed that your gas bill goes up by almost 100% in one month?

But did you know that not only do your prices go up just because it’s colder, (regardless whether it’s colder or not) but it also goes up because they add five extra days in the billing cycle of November to December, and since we pay a month behind you pay for that in January.

Not only do they add an extra 5 days to that billing cycle but that’s the time of the year that they raise prices for regular consumption as well.

When they had the extra 5 days they estimate what 5 days of usage at your normal usage rate would cost and add that to your bill.

But they don’t only add days throughout the year to every month they subtract on some of them as well. So you’ll look at your bill and see how many days each month that you pay for gas usage if you told of the days throughout the year how many days you pay it comes to 367 and 1/4 days.

But wait a minute you say, there’s only 365 1/4 days in a year. And you would be correct in the end of the year you’re paying two extra days for the year, two extra days that do not exist.

But the hardest part is the extra five days that are added at the end of the year in the middle of winter along with the price increase.

I tried to reach out to Columbia Gas and speak with them about it but to no avail. The only answer I received from them is to contact customer service if I had any questions.

But let’s not forget the point that there are many many riders that we pay for that we shouldn’t and you will find attached in this column that shows what you pay for on riders.

But I’m going to give you a very short breakdown. First and foremost, the donations that Columbia Gas makes they received their money in return from those who pay their bills in full.

For the PIPP program, the difference between what the customer owes and what is actually paid the customers who pay their full Bill cover that as well.

We pay a rider which covers their automobiles the gas for said automobiles we also pay for construction and reconstruction of streets city taxes that they have to pay for tearing up the streets excise taxes that they pay to the government etc etc etc.

Remind you I understand that we have to pay utility bills but what I don’t understand is why are we paying such highly outrageous prices and I found out by simply going through my bill item by item online looking at each individual Rider that we pay.

You also can do the same thing if you go into your bill online and go into the detail Bill section and then click on any section that you would like on front or back of the bill it will open up fully and show you each individual thing you pay for.

Basically they’re not hiding it from anyone and it turns out that they can legally do this.

It is up to us what we pay for it is also up to us whether or not we get what we pay for.

But I will leave this up to you did you decide whether or not Columbia Gas is robbing us abusing the market or if it’s just okay by you that they take your money and use it for things that you may not want.

This is what burns me

Thomas Domich

 

Police officers in tactical gear during night operation with smoke and bright lights in Fostoria, Ohio.

Federal officer shoots person in leg after being attacked during Minneapolis arrest, officials say

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

Police officers in tactical gear during night operation with smoke and bright lights in Fostoria, Ohio.

A federal Department of Homeland Security officer shot a man in the leg in Minneapolis after the officer was allegedly attacked with a shovel and broom handle during an arrest tied to an immigration operation. The man’s injuries are described by city officials as non–life-threatening, and two other people have been taken into custody.​

What officials say happened

  • DHS says officers were conducting a “targeted traffic stop” around 6:50 p.m. involving a man from Venezuela who they allege entered the U.S. illegally in 2022.​

  • The man allegedly fled in a vehicle, crashed into a parked car, then ran on foot before a federal officer caught up and tried to arrest him.​

  • During the struggle, two people came out of a nearby apartment and, along with the man, allegedly began striking the officer with a snow shovel and broom handle.​

The shooting and injuries

  • DHS says that, “fearing for his life and safety” as three people allegedly attacked him, the officer fired at least one defensive shot, hitting the initial subject in the leg.​

  • The three people then retreated into an apartment and initially barricaded themselves, according to DHS, before the two alleged attackers were taken into custody.​

  • Both the officer and the man who was shot were taken to a hospital; city officials say the man’s injuries are not considered life-threatening.​

Context in Minneapolis

  • The incident happened several miles north of where an immigration officer fatally shot Renee (also reported as Rene/Renee) Good about a week earlier, an event that has already heightened tensions over federal immigration enforcement in the city.​

  • After the leg shooting, protesters gathered near the scene; law enforcement in gas masks fired tear gas and other crowd-control munitions, while demonstrators reportedly responded with snowballs and chants.​

Status of investigations

  • DHS says federal and local authorities, including agencies such as the FBI and Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, are involved in reviewing the incident and collecting evidence.​

  • Minneapolis city officials have acknowledged public concern and urged residents to remain calm while investigations proceed.​

CORRECTION: Bloomdale, OH Post Office on the Chopping Block? Residents Seek Answers – Fostoria Free Press

/0 Comments/in , , /by

CORRECTION! Bloomdale, NOT Bloomville.

BLOOMDALE | Recently, the United States Postal Service sent letters to Bloomdale, Ohio, customers about a possible “shutdown” of the Bloomdale Post Office, which has caused understandable confusion. The Bloomdale Post Office at 10 S. Marion St. is still listed by USPS as an active facility with posted retail hours and 24‑hour PO box access, and it is not in the public lists of offices under long‑term suspension. In other words, it has not already been officially closed.​

The letters people are seeing are almost certainly part of a discontinuance “study” process, where USPS reviews whether to keep an office open, reduce services, or close it and shift customers to nearby locations such as Fostoria or Republic. In similar cases, USPS holds a community meeting to take public comment and explain options, which matches the notice about a USPS Community Meeting on Wednesday, January 7, at 3 p.m. at the Fostoria Post Office, 202 W. Center St., Fostoria, Ohio.​

It is also possible that some or all of the current discussion involves how mail is actually delivered (for example, cluster boxes or lockboxes) rather than whether the physical retail counter will stay open. USPS has increasingly shifted small communities toward centralized delivery and more limited window hours while keeping the office itself technically open.​

Given all of this, here is a clear way to describe the situation:

  • USPS has begun a formal review of the Bloomdale Post Office and has notified local customers.

  • As of the latest USPS and directory listings, the Bloomdale Post Office is not yet permanently closed, even if some residents have already experienced reduced services or changes in how they get their mail.​

  • USPS has scheduled a public community meeting for Wednesday, January 7, at 3 p.m. at the Fostoria Post Office, 202 W. Center St., where residents can ask questions and submit comments before any final decision is made.​

If you are speaking or posting about this, you can safely say the office is “under review for possible discontinuance” and encourage people to attend the Fostoria meeting and bring up concerns about both the post office and any delivery lockbox changes.

Fostoria Natural Gas Customers Facing Higher Fixed Charges or Simply Higher Usage?

/1 Comment/in , /by

FOSTORIA |In December I personal burnt through 3/4 cord of wood for heating, while using propane as supplemental. I always pre-buy 500 gal of propane from my provider to take advantage of the lower rate who those who buy before winter. Aside from my heat sources, many people in Fostoria have taken to social media regarding their high gas bills.

What Local Customers Are Reporting

Many Fostoria residents are describing bills that feel “out of line” with their actual gas usage, even when they have kept thermostats low or supplemented with alternative heat sources like wood, space heaters, or propane. Some comments suggest that people who used similar or even less gas than last year are still seeing noticeably higher total bills, raising questions about whether fixed charges and riders are playing a larger role than pure consumption.​

Fixed Charges, Riders, And Fees

Beyond the price per unit of gas, bills can include a growing list of fixed monthly charges, distribution fees, and various riders approved by regulators that do not change much with usage. When these fixed components rise, customers can pay significantly more even if they carefully manage their thermostats or invest in supplemental heating, which matches what many Fostoria residents are now describing in their bills.​

Weather And Usage Effects

December was colder than parts of the previous heating season in many areas of Ohio, which can increase the number of heating degree days and push furnaces to run more often, especially in older or less insulated homes. Even people supplementing with wood or propane may still see higher natural gas usage because basements, unused rooms, or nighttime setbacks continue to rely on the main gas system for background heat and freeze protection.​

Why Bills Can Spike Even With Conservation

Higher base rates, rising fixed charges, and weather-driven usage can stack together so that even moderate changes in gas consumption produce large swings in the final bill. That combination seems to match what many Fostoria customers are describing online: bills that feel more like the result of structural rate changes and fees than just “using too much gas,” even when households are clearly trying to conserve.

Local Sentiment

​

Starlink releases 2025 Progress Report, which highlights how Starlink has evolved over the past year.

/0 Comments/in , /by

Starlink is a global satellite internet service from SpaceX that uses the world’s largest low-Earth-orbit constellation to deliver high-speed, low-latency connectivity, especially in places traditional broadband has never reliably reached. The recent progress materials highlight rapid growth in customers, coverage, and new services like Direct to Cell while emphasizing improved network performance and space safety.​

What Starlink Is

Starlink provides internet via thousands of small satellites in low Earth orbit, paired with user terminals on the ground. This architecture allows Starlink to reach rural, remote, and underserved regions where laying fiber or building cell towers is difficult or uneconomical.​

Global Reach And Growth

Starlink now serves millions of active customers around the world and continues to add new users at a rapid pace. Service availability has expanded to dozens of additional countries and markets in just the past couple of years, bringing high-speed connectivity to communities that previously had little or no broadband access.​

Network Performance

The network is designed for high throughput and low latency, with typical customer download speeds in the hundreds of Mbps and median speeds near 200 Mbps in the United States during peak times. Engineering work over the past year has significantly reduced both average and worst-case latency worldwide, improving experiences for activities like video conferencing, cloud apps, and online gaming.​

New Capabilities: Direct To Cell

SpaceX has launched hundreds of Starlink Direct to Cell satellites, building a space-based cellular network intended to support text, voice, data, and IoT connectivity directly from standard mobile phones. The progress report notes that Direct to Cell has already provided service to many millions of people at least once, often in situations where conventional networks were unavailable or damaged.​

Impact On Communities

Starlink’s own progress stories emphasize its role in connecting rural school districts, tribal governments, and remote communities, enabling online education, telehealth, public safety, and local economic development. These case studies show how reliable satellite broadband can bridge the digital divide by delivering fast, affordable internet for the first time to some of the most isolated locations on Earth.​

Everyone Must Re-apply for SNAP Benefits Amid 180K+ Dead People Receiving Checks

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Nov 15 2025 | Newsmax 
The Trump administration will require millions of food aid recipients to recertify their information to receive benefits, part of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ effort to overhaul the program, she told Newsmax on Thursday.

On “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” Rollins said she plans to “have everyone reapply for their benefits, make sure that everyone that’s taking a taxpayer-funded benefit through … food stamps, that they literally are vulnerable and they can’t survive without it.”

Rollins was discussing fraud in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and said after receiving data on recipients from 29 red states that “186,000 deceased men and women and children in this country are receiving a check.”

She added, “Can you imagine when we get our hands on the blue state data what we’re going to find?

“It’s going to give us a platform and a trajectory to fundamentally rebuild this program.”

Rollins said her department found one man receiving the same benefit in six states.

“So, these are the things that we’re uncovering that for years no one has really ever dug into because the feds didn’t have the system in place to do it,” she said.

“But we do now. The president has made this a priority. We will fix this program.”

The Trump administration has arrested about 120 Americans “committing fraud on the system,” she said.

“We are actively with the [Department of Justice], with a lot of the other investigation units around the country, already arresting. There’s a lot of people already sitting in jail, but I think we’re just at the very tip of the iceberg and what we’re going to find,” she added.

BREAKING: Monday U.S Travelers Hit With 2,400+ Flight Cancellations And Growing

/0 Comments/in /by

November 12, 2025, 9:00 AM

Air travel woes persist into Tuesday as airlines brace to cancel 6% of flights at 40 bustling U.S. airports, adhering to a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) directive— even as the Senate late Monday approved a bipartisan measure to halt the nation’s longest government shutdown.

By Tuesday afternoon, FlightAware data showed over 1,200 U.S. flights scrapped and more than 2,000 delayed. United Airlines released an extensive roster of its axed flights for Tuesday and Wednesday, spanning dawn-to-dusk routes nationwide from 6 a.m. to nearly 9 p.m.

Epicenters of Disruption

The mandate targets high-volume hubs in key metros: Chicago’s O’Hare, New York-area airports, Washington, D.C., Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson, and Dallas-Fort Worth. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy is slated to brief on aviation updates from O’Hare on Tuesday, following his Monday appearance.

Compounding the chaos: Monday marked the season’s chilliest dawn, with frost gripping Florida and freeze warnings blanketing 66 million residents from southeast Virginia to the Gulf Coast. Temps plunged to the 20s and 30s, lingering 10-20 degrees below norms through the afternoon.

Midwest lake-effect snow, kicking off Monday, pushed northeastward Tuesday, threatening 4-8 more inches in vulnerable spots. Untangling weather’s toll from staffing shortfalls or FAA orders remains elusive.

FAA’s Escalating Cuts Amid Shutdown Stalemate

The FAA’s strategy, unveiled last week, schedules proactive cancellations to ease burdens on unpaid air traffic controllers and TSA staff—now 42 days into furlough. Expect 8% reductions Thursday, ramping to 10% Friday.

This squeeze arrives post-Senate vote, where eight Democrats crossed lines to greenlight the shutdown-ending bill. Yet hurdles loom: House approval, then President Donald Trump’s signature—he’s voiced backing, but full operations hinge on swift action.

Trump fired off a Monday Truth Social missive, blasting absentee controllers and floating a $10,000 bonus for shutdown stalwarts: “even though he admitted he didn’t know where the money would come from.”

Essential personnel can’t strike sans pay, per federal rules. A 2018 statute guarantees back pay, but six weeks of limbo have sparked shortages and snags at airports.

Traveler Strains and Airline Vows

Carriers pledge maximal rebooking flexibility, but realities bite: One NBC News interviewee endured three sequential cancellations.

Duffy stressed Tuesday that FAA-mandated axings trigger automatic refunds—airlines foot the bill, sans usual hurdles. Still, post-shutdown recovery could drag, delaying full schedules.

Monday tallied 2,400+ cancellations, including the FAA’s 4% quota. Over 5 million passengers have endured delays from controller crunches, per FAA stats.

Pre-Nov. 7, just 11 flights fell to staffing woes (Oct. 1-29). That ballooned to 4,162 (Oct. 30-Nov. 9), with 3,756 in the Nov. 7-9 spike when mandates hit the 40 airports.

Voices from the Front Lines

Passengers voice empathy for airport and airspace workers. Yet National Air Traffic Controllers Association head Nick Daniels warns of peril: “This is the erosion of the safety margin the public never sees, but America relies on every single day,” he declared at a briefing.

As bipartisan momentum builds, the skies hang in limbo— a stark reminder of shutdown scars on everyday mobility.

POWER GRID NOTICE: NCE Warns of Forced Load Shedding & Urges Customers to Immediately Reduce Power Consumption

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by
ATTICA, OH | North Central Electric (NCE) is calling on its members to reduce electricity usage following a severe storm on June 18, 2025, that caused an AEP transmission issue affecting the cooperative’s service territory. The failure, outside NCE’s control, has impacted three of its 12 distribution substations, covering about one-third of the area. AEP has estimated a minimum two-day repair timeline as of 4:53 PM CDT today, June 19, 2025.
Currently, NCE is backfeeding power from other substations, but the cooperative has reached its maximum output, limiting its ability to adjust power distribution. With rising temperatures expected to increase demand, NCE is asking members to help stabilize the system by shedding load. Suggested actions include limiting air conditioner use, slightly raising thermostat settings, delaying the operation of large appliances like washers and dryers, and turning off unnecessary power sources. Members with home generators are encouraged to use them when possible.
Failure to reduce demand could force NCE to implement load shedding, a measure the cooperative aims to avoid. While backfeeding is a valuable feature of NCE’s system, it’s not designed for prolonged high-level use. NCE is collaborating with AEP to expedite repairs and restore full grid capacity, urging community support to benefit all members during this challenging period.
© Copyright - The Fostoria Free Press LTD.
error: Content is protected !!