As BC Hydro gears up to install 250,000 of its “smart meters” by the end of October – the utility has already reached the 100,000 mark – it’s top officials are engaging with municipal leaders, businesses and the public in a bid to quell rising opposition to the controversial devices.
The $930 million project is continuing under budget and ahead of schedule, and for the most part feedback from the province’s mayors has been good, Gary Murphy, Hydro’s chief project officer for the Smart Metering Program, said in an interview.
“I sense a lot of support for the program,” he said.
But Murphy added he was unsure how the utility would deal with those municipalities that want the rollout halted.
“The important thing to know is that they have no jurisdictional authority over our ability to install smart meters,” he said on the sidelines of the Generate 2011 clean energy conference.
Murphy presented the business case for the smart meters program at the conference last Tuesday and earlier also spoke at the Union of BC Municipalities convention in Vancouver, addressing issues that included the hefty price tag. The cost is high, he said, but the payback period is eight years.
“The benefits to our customers are $1.6 billion, so when you factor in the costs and the benefits, the overall net benefit to our customers is $520 million over the 20-year life of the program. That goes back to our customers in the form of lower rates.”
BC Hydro claims the program will make its grid more reliable, increase public and employee safety and provide immediate savings. It would also cut down on energy theft, mostly from grow ops.
“Our conservative estimate is that $100 million a year of revenue is being stolen by these illegal grow ops, and that’s why our focus is on those primarily, and that’s what we’re going after first,” Murphy said.
He added that while the new meters would not eliminate the problem, it would “put a significant damper on it and cause these illegal grow-ops to either go off the grid or move out of the service territory.”
Even with the new meters and the publicity surrounding them, the utility has discovered almost two dozen cases of tampering and theft.
Murphy described the system as a “breakthrough” in the type of information that it collects and the functionality that it brings, particularly in trying to meet rising demand for electricity. The ability to remotely disconnect and reconnect a service and automatic outage alerts are among its benefits, and information sent would be used by Hydro’s operation control centre to measure, monitor and to adjust the voltage profiles along its distribution system, which consists of 18,000 kilometres of transmission lines, 56,000 kilometres of distribution lines and approximately 200 sub stations, he said. “When we do that the amount of energy we need to purchase from our generators is substantially reduced, and those savings get translated to our customers in terms of lower bills.”
And beginning April next year every customer that has a smart meter will be able to log on to a secure websiteand look at their energy use over the billing period.
Murphy dismissed the radio frequency concerns that have been growing in recent weeks. “We’re disappointed that the special-interest groups are using misinformation, half truths, lot’s of opinion masquerading as science to cause fear, and uncertainty and doubt in members of the community.” •
