iFixit

The true innovation in the smart meters is their ability to relay power consumption statistics without direct contact from a meter reader. Our Elster meter accomplishes this by sending encrypted signals on the 900 MHz ISM band. The antenna can be seen on the rear side of the board near its bottom edge.

• Elster designed the antenna pattern to force signals away from households.

Elster meters only relay information when they are spoken to by other meters in the mesh. When they relay information the amount of RF radiation emitted is ~1/4 W, which is less than most cellular phones.

• Elster designed its meters to transmit data every six hours for 40 ms (.04 seconds) at a time.

The controversy surrounding smart meters is the question of whether the additional radio-frequency (RF) signals will cause any undesired health effects.

On one side of the coin, as petitioners have pointed out, smart meters contribute to the already looming cloud of "electro-smog" produced by the multitude of today's devices that produce RF signals.

On the other hand, it seems that opponents do not consider the claimed operational characteristics of smart meters. As PG&E points out (they use meters manufactured by GE):

• Consider that SmartMeters™ transmit only about 45 seconds a day. You'd have to have one of our meters on your home or business for more than 1,000 years to get as much exposure to radio waves as a typical cell phone user gets in just one month.

So if the device was always on, 24/7, there might be a cause for concern. But if what PG&E states about the limited transmit time is true, your cellphones, Wi-Fi internet, and microwaves are probably causing your body more damage than a smart meter would. That is, unless you've never used a cellphone or any other device producing radio frequencies.

Lastly, we can remove the LCD.

As you can see, the monochrome LCD does not have any ribbon cables connecting it to the motherboard.

It seems to work via a method of conduction, where the bottom black strip comes into contact with pads on the motherboard, thus producing an image.

This method of LCD connection is very common, and the black and pink strip is called a "zebra connector."

Normally we'd assign a Repairability Score on the last step, but we don't feel it's appropriate for this device. After all, there's a tamper-evident security seal for a reason.

Even so, we're glad to know that the smart meter doesn't have easily-breakable internal components, and can be serviced without difficulty by an authorized service technician.

A big thanks to Elster for providing us one of these meters! We certainly didn't want to take ours off the grid in order to mess around with it.