Smart meters will soon be coming to your household and your business.
That’s the message Fiona Taylor, deputy chief project officer of B.C. Hydro’s Smart Metering, brought to a recent Williams Lake Chamber of Commerce meeting.
Taylor told chamber members B.C. Hydro expects a 40 per cent increase in demand for power in the next 20 years.
Smart meters, she said, are the company’s “key early modernization” initiative and predicted they would achieve $1.6 billion over the next 20 years. Smart meters can be expected in Williams Lake by late this year or early 2012.
The meters have theft-detection components, in-home feedback tools to give customers information about their power usage, an alert function to inform B.C. Hydro of where outages are located, as well as tamper-detection capability.
Taylor characterized hydro theft as a public safety issue that has seen an increase in tapping into hydro wires and bypassing the metre since 2006.
“Smart meters make sure we get power to you at the right voltage; they save electricity and save money and when we save money you save money.”
For more information on B.C. Hydro’s smart metres visit www.bchydro.com/smartmeters or smartmeters@bchydro.com.