approved that. rmr contracts that you hear us talk about. they did actually update it regularly. this directed the staff to modify the resolution to ensure their desire for closure as soon as possible can be reflected in the formal action they took. the city attorney and supervisor maxwell, the district where it is located, both sent a letter to the iso board of governors $ie;u.et7vünn?"[m6itheir persh the closure. ÷úñrthey were also speaking on behalf of citizens to ensure its closure, so this continues, together with stakeholders, to

apply pressure and to make it clear to the iso that we look forward to closure. i think the communications between staff, both at the puc, myself, the city attorney, with the mayor's office, with the stakeholders, it has been good in this process, so i think we're seeing really positive improvements in that regard. we have different opinions about the technical information. xibñiñiñiduring the board of gos meeting, so in the event that it does not come through the test successfully, we have a common understanding of what our next possible steps are to achieve closure. on that note, unfortu8puqe on

september 8, the trans bay cable project did trip off-line during a test period. the testing ish= scheduled to resume. it was scheduled to end on september 10 and then resumed and that will conclude on october 10. they will of the other big results of the testing, and a determination will be made about whether the project is ready to bear, if you will, the reliability burden that the potrero is involved in.

they would look at the termination of the process. they are, at this time, working with mirant to shorten and accelerate determination process that is in the current project. president crowley: barbara, could you mention more about the letter concerning mirant? >> yes, " in unity, it is important to note that on

september 7, mirant's president sent a letter to the iso that they did not want the reliability must-run contract extended through 2011. having stated that previously, they also knowledge in their same correspondence that they would mean whatever obligations are placed on them, and they would operate if they were required to, but they made it very clear formally on the record that they wanted to see it closed. there was a dialogue that happened on the ninth. commissioner: barbour, the

timeline for when it is complete? >> in working with feet iso staff, they're optimistic that evaluation of the test period data will be completed by november and that they will be in a position at that point to make a judgment. we had argued that knowing that they may know as early as november that the facility at that facility would not be needed on january 1, that they not extend the contract now, that they could wait probs the 30 or 45 days it would take to evaluate and to the test period with your valley region of the data, but the board did not agree with us. on the positive side, they did make it clear that it wanted staff to arrange for accelerated termination. and to report to them regularly

on the status, so we're optimistic that if evaluations show that it will not be needed, we will have no potrero operations as of january 1. commissioner: what will happen to it? >> it will be dismantled and other opportunities pursued. redevelopment of the power plant site. one company is obligated to perform mediation at the site, because they are the prior owner of the facility, and so they have responsibility for much of the cleanup. that cleanup cannot commence in earnest before the facility is released from its must run obligation. pg&e has stated that they are standing ready to begin that

work, once the boiso says mirant can shut that down. : commissioner -- commissioner: does the city owned that? >> no, but -- president crowley: we are trying to develop some of it, but we do not own all of the land, right? >> correct. for that area to be redeveloped, there is still a substation nearby that would remain. and as we get closer to the actual shut the new and are able to report, we will do that.

commissioner: i think that tate project in england was really great, where they made that into a museum, and i think it would be great if we could get to that level of radiation. -- we mediation -- remediation. >> r&b cable is expected to be doing things. -- transbay cable. president crowley: if you drive out there, there is just a lot

of drunks. it has significance. -- there is a lot of junk. commissioner: i have some questions. what were the loads expected for the transbay, and who is testing it on our behalf? >> it is being tested with the owners and those who own that line. it is being tested with oversight from the independent system operator, from the iso. president crowley: thank you. >> you are welcome. secretary housh: we took this to mean that it would be good to tell you about our automated water meter project, so we can show that and differentiate that. >> and i get to talk about the

pg&e smart meter part, and he will talk about our water program. as you know, pg&e has been authorized to install a smart meters and to implement that program throughout its service territory. the california public utilities commission authorized $2.20 billion on the program. pg&e was scheduled to begin deploying meters, smart meters, in san francisco on july 1 of this year. they have received since beginning deployment, in november of 2006, they have deployed a 6.6 million smart meters -- deployed 6.6 million smart meters, and 3.9 of those were installed in 2010. over 1300 pg&e customers filed complaints. there were complaints of

largely in the bakersfield and fresno area. the california public utilities commission received so many complaints, and pg&e acknowledged some existence of problems, that they began independent investigation into the accuracy of the pg&e smart meters. the city, a out of concern over complaints that we have already been hearing about, a petition was said into the california public utilities commission and requested that they direct pg&e to suspend deployment in san francisco or to take a pause while the investigation was pursued, so rather than installing and having to take them out and put them in again if there were problems with the meters, we asked them to just take a pause and see what the results of the investigation are.

a number of cities and others supported our decision to suspend deployment. you see them on the screen there. actually, you do not see them on the screen. thanks, mike, if you put that on the screen. not noticing, thank you, general manager. we have not had a response from the california public utilities commission to ours. they did not comment on suspending deployment. they did receive though on september 2, the california public utilities commission did receive the results of the third-party investigation. that investigation was performed by a consulting group, it independently evaluating their smart meter program and the deployment at pg&e, and what i captured on this slide for you, the bottom line, i think,

from the report is that the technology is good. they determined that the technology is good. the problems that were experienced in the pg&e service. they attribute to gaps in customer service. and the processes that were pursued by pg&e related to complaints, so it's sort of had a bottom line message that technology could, pg&e program deployment and response to customers not so good. and, thankfully, we have an opportunity here to learn from that experience, and our project manager, heathetr, for our deployment of these high-tech meters has sat down with my staff and has the report and is taking it as a lessons learned opportunity, so we will make sure we do not have the same

kind of customer service problems when we deploy, as we deploy, and as we talk more about the details of our program, another will not take over. if you have any questions? commissioner: i do. from the environmental health perspective, i guess there have been some concerns raised around the electromagnetic force, whatever, sensitivities in that area, so i think there are some concerns, and i do not know what percentage of customer complaints are related to that, and i guess there have also been some questions around safety issues. i think there have been some questions concerning the fiber issues, and then the third are related to privacy issues. i guess this is paramount. >> the electromagnetic field

concern, i think that was beyond the scope of what they were asked to look at. they were at ask to look at certain issues. there were those that word certain environmental factors. i can go back and see if there is a break out of that information, and if so, i can provide it, and, yes, i, too, have seen this. for example, the photographs of the installers of the meters have head gear on and the gloves, and the question is, wow, if it takes that type of equipment to install it, is it really ok outside of my bedroom window? it was not tasked to look at

those environmental concerns. they were tasked to look at the technology. i can go back and see if the california public utilities commission has addressed any of those concerns. commissioner: great, in those three areas, i think it would be good to get more information, a ticker korea before a big rollout. and there was a privacy question around. this gives a certain amount of access that may not have existed. >> i cannot answer those questions with respect to the pg&e smart meter program, but i know that they are willing to address some of those for our water meter, so why do i not come back to you? we can hear from mr. richie now.

>> props. mike, if you can bring the screen back? i am here to talk about the water meter program that we are engaged in right now, and this is a water meter. we have been looking at this as exactly the same technology that has always been there. looking at what transmits it to the puc, we will talk about that, but what we're basically talking about is going from a manual system to an electronic system, where the signal is transmitted through a series of

steps to the puc, with the data in cryptic, so it is not from this address or this person, so that information is not transmitted with that. we have about 180,000 water meters in san francisco. two-thirds of those are more than 20 years old. one thing we know is that as these get old overtime, they start to run inefficiently, so we are virtually replacing every meter in san francisco with a brand new meter. we are collecting the data on an hourly basis. this will detect things far more rapidly because we will see spikes in usage. we will be working towards, as barbara just said, retail meters, as well, using these same meters.

you would not have to install others. and we're using the local work force to do this. first, the need to transition units, which is this little grey box. when it comes to your home near you, this will be screwed to the underside of the meter box cover, and the meter just sits where it always does with the pipe itself. and then transmits the data to will be called data collection units, of which there are 77 that are scattered around the city so far. they collect material and then transport it to the networking computer that then deals with the data. the meter transition units, again, they take our lead readings, and the technology has not changed.

i want to keep emphasizing that. this is technology from decades of use. these are no some -- not some newfangled type of thing. the box transmits the data at 4 bits per day, so it is not a constant stream of data. it is just four times per day. it can be shut off remotely. they're pretty well protected so they cannot be tampered with without physically going to remove the box, and, that means we have, again, those that are manually read, they can always check those. the data collection units, that receives the meter reading frequency channel, puc, at 77 places across the

city, and they are pretty innocuous looking, but they are scattered around the city. most of them are run on solar power, with a few on ac current because they are in areas where there is not access to enough sunlight to make it working very well. this one is actually on the roof on some offices. the project deployment schedule, we have been in the phase where we have been deploying about 300 to 400 meters per week. this will extend it to about 8000 units.

we will then go into work in phase one. again, will be testing at the end of that phase. we will be doing even more than 2000 per week, so by april 2012, we will never replace all of the leaders in san francisco, and they will all be wired up so you can read them electronically. this map shows the distribution. the green boxes are the dcu's, scattered around the city. you can see that there was a big

vote agglomeration -- a big agglomeration. and yellow areas are where we are going to go beyond the first 5000 to get the next 3000 in place, so we're going to have a lot of things around the city. some of these things were chosen to make sure that we could get a good shot of readings be in taken from difficult locations -- a good shot of readings being taken. 100% of the meters are tested according to standards, and we are doing other tests to make sure that they are being accurate. we will then do accuracy of field testing, where we will do manual reads to compare to what is coming into the electronic

system. we do not want to do with live until we make sure it works, and there will be no billing until we know they are working properly. we are expecting about 5% of all installations out there -- we will be doing functional requirements testing at the end of each work phase, complete functionality testing, and the last thing we just completed was a radio frequency emissions testing, and this table shows the results of that. what you see is a comparison of microwatts, what is emitted from units, and it shows various devices. as one was using a smart phone earlier, you should be careful of that. but lots of different things, cell phones, smart phones, baby monitors, cord was phones,

headsets, microwave ovens, they all have varying degrees of frequency emissions, and the top three are the meter transmission unit, the dcu, and transmitted to our computer system, and you see those results do not even make the skill with all of those other routine devices, and in the case of the meter transmission units, that was made standing directly over a meter, so it was not 10 feet away, 20 feet away. it was actually on the meeting itself, so we're pretty encouraged by these results. we have very low emissions, and they are intermittent. it is not a continuous stream going out. last and not least, we are hiring local on this. we have between three and 35 installers, and seven of those will actually becoming with the

contractor on this, so they have people who have done this elsewhere. we expect to be adding 20 installers during the two-year installation project, and so far, we have two in this phase, and we expect to include some additional hires as we go beyond, moving he quit in and out. it will be a big deal. and we are using local businesses for incidentals. they were required to put forth the effort to hire locally. uniform janitorial services should be added to the list, so we're trying to get as much as we can in terms of local hires into this, and that is really it. i release speaking on behalf of

heather, the project manager on this. she is actually in texas as part of a gathering of people who regularly work on this to share what works and what does not to make sure we are looking out there as far as possible before we get there. commissioner: i would like to just bring up those three other areas that i mentioned to make sure we are covered. i do not know a lot about e.m.s., but i would assume that -- i do not know a lot about emf, but i would assume that rf would be the same.

and there are questions around safety and privacy. i do not know if those are concerns when it comes to this marni or not -- >> in terms of safety, these are typically meters that are in the sidewalk, and when we observe an installation, this is traditional. commissioner: what about -- >> this is actually bolted underneath, so it is separated from the ground, kind of

suspended in the air with nothing else touching it. the boxes made out of a non transmits of material. so physically, it should be pretty good, and, again, on privacy, the data is transmitted with a unique number of identifiers. they are not transmitted with any other information like name or address, so it comes to our customer service bureau as unique data that are included, and then they can actually utilize in there, so there should not be any haute issue. vice president vietor: well, that would be great to come back with that. i think it is important just to have a conversation. thank you. commissioner: so the grey box is attached to the meter? >> the bottom,