Residents across Franklin County may have experienced Eversource workers visiting their homes over the past few months to replace their electric meters with “smart meters,” a change that has stirred pushback from residents who are facing fees to opt out and who feel they’ve been stripped of their choice to determine their exposure to radiofrequencies.
According to Luis Pizano, director of the smart meter program at Eversource, the company monitors electricity usage once a month with the current electric meters. Smart meters, or digital electric meters, instead send electricity and WiFi usage information, called “interval data,” to Eversource about every 15 minutes. Through these readings, customers can view their energy usage and projected bill on their online account or Eversource mobile app.
Pizano described the smart meters as both a necessary update to the more dated meters and a measure that “[gives] customers more visibility and control over their own energy usage.”
“This should really take the guesswork out of it,” Pizano said, describing the information the smart meters provide as similar to having a gas gauge on a vehicle’s dashboard.
With updates around every 15 minutes, Pizano said the smart meters will also allow the company to react to outages with more speed, instead of relying on calls from community members reporting a power loss.
According to Pizano, having the new meter will not raise monthly bills, as these are dependent on energy usage alone. He traced bill jumps after installation of the meters to typical increases in usage during cold weather.
Making the switch or opting out
Eversource started making the change with Greenfield customers in August and expanded beyond the city in December, switching electric meters to smart meters in Deerfield, Leverett, Montague and Sunderland with plans to begin in Ashfield, Bernardston, Buckland, Colrain, Conway, Erving, Gill, Leyden and Shelburne in January. By the end of March, Eversource plans to finish the changeover in western Massachusetts, Pizano said.
Customers learned about the change through three notice letters 90, 60 and 30 days before the expected smart meter installation. Since the start of the rollout, Pizano said about 300 customers have called about opting out of the smart meters, representing about 0.1% of Eversource customers.
To opt out, Pizano said customers must call the general customer service phone number, 800-592-2000, before reaching an employee that specializes in communications around the smart meters.
When customers opt out, Eversource still replaces the current meter with a smart meter, but the company turns off the wireless communication, requiring an Eversource employee to travel to the homes and read the usage data manually. With the current meters, an employee takes readings by driving by the homes with a scanner, Pizano said.
To cover the additional cost of having an employee stop by homes to read the meter, Eversource charges customers who opt out a one-time fee of $42 and a monthly fee of $34. According to Pizano, customers who opt out at least 10 days before the smart meter installation will likely not be charged the one-time $42 fee.
“We’re implementing a new technology and it would force us to maintain the old one, too,” Pizano said. “This we feel is the most equitable solution, because it’s only impacting the people who want to opt out.”
Brenda Silva, an Eversource customer in Erving, views the new charge for opting out as a “punishment” to those not in favor of the smart meter.
“To be penalized because you don’t want a wireless communication like that coming from your house is … it’s like they’re beating up the consumer. It’s a penalization to the consumer for not wanting to have their information sent across town to a box on a pole,” Silva said. “People should have a right to choose that specific thing.”
In addition to three 2026 ballot measures that failed to reach the required number of signatures, the smart meter rollout has inspired legislation. H.3551, “An Act Relative to Smart Meters,” would ensure that residents have “the ability to retain and operate an ‘electromechanical analog meter’ on an ongoing basis at no cost,” and “the right to replacement of a wireless meter with a non-transmitting electromechanical meter at no cost.” The legislation would also require that utility companies obtain the ratepayer’s written consent before installing wireless meters or “equivalent technology” on the ratepayer’s property, and before altering the functionality of said meters.
Should the bill pass, utility companies would be prohibited from imposing any disincentive on a ratepayer for not consenting to the installation or use of wireless meters, and would be prohibited from shutting off service to any ratepayer based on that customer having an electromechanical analog meter.
The reporting date on the legislation, filed by Rep. Estela Reyes of Lawrence, was recently extended to March 18, 2026.
Health concerns
Like Silva, Donna Estabrooks of Montague decided to opt out. She views the smart meters as a threat to her health.
For three years, headaches and an erratic heartbeat kept Estabrooks awake at night. After leaving visits to the emergency room without a diagnosis, a doctor suggested she turn off her internet.
“And I quickly improved dramatically,” Estabrooks recounted.
Estabrooks researched electromagnetic sensitivity online, also called electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), electromagnetic hypersensitivity refers to health problems linked to exposure to electromagnetic field sources like cellphones, computers and cell towers that emit radio waves. Although the WHO describes EHS as “a disabling problem for the affected individual,” it clarifies that EHS is not a medical diagnosis and lacks a scientific basis linking EHS symptoms to electromagnetic field exposure.
Kent Chamberlin, former chair and professor emeritus of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of New Hampshire, evaluated data regarding health effects related to 5G technology as a member of the New Hampshire Commission on the Health and Environmental Impacts of Wireless Radiation in 2020.
“I was shocked by just how much information is out there showing the harms of radiation,” Chamberlin said. The commission reported that thousands of studies illustrated negative health effects associated with cellphone exposure.
“Anything that radiates electromagnetic waves does pose a health risk,” Chamberlin said. Regarding the potential health effects of smart meters, he said, “We know that it causes harm; we just don’t know the degree compared to other devices. … As our radiation levels increase, then more and more people are going to be showing symptoms of wireless radiation exposure.”
Susan Markush, a professor at Greenfield Community College, said not enough testing has been done on the health effects of low-level electromagnetic field sources, like cellphones and smart meters.
“It feels like we kind of just jumped into the microwave, cellphone and now smart meter era without gathering consistent, conclusive evidence one way or another — although more and more attention is being given to this subject,” Markush said.
According to Markush, several studies establish that radiofrequencies heat up tissues and cells when they reach human bodies, but whether this warming harms proteins and causes health symptoms depends on the waves’ intensity and frequency, and the duration of the exposure to the radiofrequencies. She mentioned a study that found radiation disrupted the production of neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin, “which have multiple and powerful roles in the functioning of the body and mind.”
“Although there is a lack of consistent evidence that low-level [radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation] causes headaches and fatigue, I think it would be too dismissive and foolish not to consider it — especially when considering the possible accumulative effect of all the gadgets emitting [radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation] in a typical modern home,” Markush said.
Due to these findings, Chamberlin said individuals “need to be able to control their electromagnetic environment.”
Should the House legislation pass, the bill states that utility companies would be “prohibited from discriminating against ratepayers who may have medical conditions that are exacerbated by exposures to pulsed microwave radiofrequencies.”
Estabrooks and Silva said Eversource’s smart meter project strips them of the choice to determine their exposure to radiofrequencies.
“I’m not against having a different unit on my house. I just don’t want to have something that I can’t change,” Estabrooks said. “I can get rid of my internet, I can take out my stove and switch it out, I can do these things, but I can’t take off the smart meter.”
In response, Pizano stressed that although customers use the meters, Eversource owns them.
“Eversource has to have the ability to service our meters, to maintain them, to take them out when needed,” Pizano said, adding that the current meter system is more than 20 years old. “We want to work with our customers, but fundamentally they don’t own those meters. It’s part of our overall infrastructure [and] it’s how we deliver energy.”
Pizano said the smart meters follow Federal Communications Commission limits for levels of radiofrequency exposure. According to Pizano, the level of electromagnetic radiation smart meters emit falls above a television set and below a cellphone. Eversource has not tested the health effects of the smart meters, seeing no need considering the ubiquity of devices that emit electromagnetic waves, Pizano said.
“Fundamentally, I have not seen anything credible that would lead me to believe that there’s any safety concerns,” Pizano said. “The smart meters [are] a tiny component of all the radiofrequencies that are out there. … Smart meters are not the straw that will break the camel’s back.”
Jonathan Mirin, co-founder of Hilltown Health, a grassroots organization with a goal “to leverage safe technology for healthier, more sustainable communities,” described Eversource’s description of the smart meters as safe technology as a “party line.”
“You can’t tell people, ‘We’re going to put this on and it’s going to harm you,'” Mirin said.
Hilltown Health will host a screening of the documentary, “Take Back Your Power,” which covers the spread of smart meters, on Jan. 12, at 6 p.m. in the Greenfield Public Library.
Like Estabrooks, Mirin’s wife experienced symptoms commonly linked to EHS, including difficulty sleeping, coordination issues and headaches.
“We just get these conscious and unconscious messages all the time that this is now, this is the world we live in and it’s a wireless world, and this is an unquestionable good. This is just good, it’s convenient, it’s magical, it helps us communicate,” Mirin said. “It’s not that that’s all untrue, it’s just that there’s another side to it.”