Last week the California Public Utilities Commission issued a draft decision in its review of Pacific Gas & Electric’s smart meter opt-out proposal.

I have mixed feelings about this…

Opt out is clearly bad public policy in the sense that it reduces smart meter benefits to everyone and increases costs and complexity. At a minimum, opt-out customers should bear their associated costs.

In this sense, the proposed CPUC decision is disappointing because it wouldn’t cover PG&E’s full incremental costs. CPUC has proposed that most customers pay an initial fee of $90 to opt out plus $15/month. Low-income customers would pay $5/month to opt out, with no up-front fee. This is less than what PG&E had proposed.

But there is a pragmatic element to this opt-out concept: evidence suggests that very few customers will actually opt out.

In Littleton, Massachusetts, only 13 customers opted out of wireless automatic meter reading, with a monthly fee estimated at $5. That works out to 0.2% of the customer base.

In a sense, opt out will make people “put their money where their mouth is.” Then we will see the true level of opposition to smart meters.

While the opposition is very vocal, in the end the number of opt-outs likely will be very small.