A Guernsey grandmother says she has been driven out of her home and forced to sleep in her car after a new electricity meter caused her severe health problems.
Simone Simon, from the Vale, claims her physical health spiralled after Guernsey Electricity Limited (GEL) fitted a Paywise prepayment meter at her property in February 2024.
Mrs Simon claims the meter’s electromagnetic emissions cause her severe physical distress, exacerbating her pre-existing health conditions, including a past cancer diagnosis, PTSD, chronic pain, and severe tachycardia.
She is now demanding that GEL remove the device or move it outside her home, but has been told it could cost between £3,600 and £6,400 to relocate it.
Mrs Simon told Express her body has been in “constant revolt” since the meter went in.
“The pain in my chest and the racing of my heart are unbearable – it feels like an electric current running through me 24/7,” she added.
Complaint struck out
A GEL spokesperson said the firm “does not generally comment publicly on the individual circumstances of customers, particularly where these involve personal or medical information”.
However, they said Mrs Simon’s case was “subject of a complaint to the Employment and Discrimination Tribunal” which “struck out” the complaint “in its entirety”, following a pre-hearing review.
The tribunal’s written decision would be “published in due course and will set out the reasons in full”, the spokesperson added.
The firm said it was “committed to ensuring that all of its metering equipment meets the relevant safety and electromagnetic compatibility standards”.
The spokesperson added: “Where a customer requests an electricity meter is relocated outside of a property, we provide an individual quote based on the complexity of the work.”
That work included safely relocating the meter to “suitable external location in a weatherproof enclosure”.
The utility company emphasised that relocating a meter is a complex technical task requiring safety checks and rewiring.
Many of GEL’s meters, including the one in Mrs Simon’s home, were supplied by UK-based Gemmtech Limited.
However, Companies House records show the supplier went into voluntary liquidation in December 2025 and ceased trading, meaning the company was unavailable for comment.
GP letters
Mrs Simon said the “relentless” pain had “completely broken” her.
She added: “My heart races out of control, and the distress became so severe that I simply couldn’t endure another night inside that house.
“Living out of my car is miserable, but staying inside that room feels unbearable.”
Medical letters seen by Express confirm her GP sent GEL an exemption letter recommending the meter be replaced as a matter of “medical necessity and patient safety”.
While the GP noted electromagnetic hypersensitivity remains a “contentious subject with no firm evidence either way”, he confirmed Mrs Simon experiences genuine physical symptoms inside her house that resolve when she leaves.
Mrs Simon claims the device causes her chest pain, dizziness, severe sleep deprivation, ear bleeding, skin inflammation, and violent heart palpitations.
She has since been diagnosed with severe tachycardia, requiring prescribed medication.
The situation escalated in October 2024 when Mrs Simon was admitted to hospital with severe cellulitis and blistering to her arm, with blood tests showing critically high inflammatory markers.
While there is no proven cause-and-effect link between the meter and her hospital admission, Mrs Simon believes the two are related.
Her GP wrote to GEL: “She sleeps in her car and feels estranged from her grandson and daughters and my only reason for writing is to try and find a way through.”
Cost of moving the meter
Desperate to return home to her family, Mrs Simon requested that the meter be relocated to an exterior wall or garage.
However, GEL provided quotes ranging between £3,688 and £6,409 to carry out the work.
Mrs Simon told us she felt GEL was “holding a gun to my head”.
You put something in my house, on my private property, that’s harming me, and you want me to then pay thousands of pounds to remove it?
Simone Simon, Guernsey Electricity customer
GEL has since forwarded her ongoing emails into a central folder “to be periodically reviewed”, as the company said it was “not reasonably practicable” to read them all due to the “significant volume of emails” she sent.
In an email chain seen by Express, the firm said Mrs Simon sometimes sent “multiple emails and letters daily”, with some being up to 100 pages long.
Can radio waves cause illness?
Mrs Simon’s claims touch on a fierce, long-running global debate surrounding radio-frequency (RF) radiation and ‘smart’ meters.
To support her case, Mrs Simon provided Express with extensive dossiers, expert submissions, and international research.
These include papers advancing minority scientific theories arguing that low-level, non-thermal RF radiation and electrical line noise (so-called ‘dirty electricity’) can trigger cellular stress, heart arrhythmia, and electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) in susceptible individuals.
However, the overwhelming consensus among mainstream scientific bodies and public health authorities – including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) – is that ‘smart’ meters are safe.
Mainstream health agencies acknowledge that at very high levels, radio-frequency radiation can cause physical harm by heating body tissue.
However, there is no universally accepted and established evidence that low-level exposure causes illness.
Mrs Simon’s own GP acknowledged that electromagnetic hypersensitivity remained a “contentious subject with no firm evidence either way”.
Mainstream health agencies say RF emissions from ‘smart’ meters sit thousands of times below international safety limits.
They maintain there is no established scientific evidence that radio waves from household meters cause biological damage or medical illness, with health experts often attributing reported EHS symptoms to underlying health conditions or the ‘nocebo effect’ (where anxiety about a technology causes real physical suffering).
However, Mrs Simon’s GP maintained she was “genuine”, adding that he believed “this meter is causing her excess physical and mental stress”.
Mrs Simon maintains that her symptoms are directly linked to the device, but without an agreement with GEL, her standoff with the utility company leaves her unable to live in her home.
