so now the power company

,and therefore the government, will have an in-home,real-time window into the behaviour and activities of every citizen. There is NO way they could abuse that.

"Smart Meters"

One big problem with the introduction of so-called 'smart meters' is taht it only reduces demand slightly, but installing the meters is costly. The BCUC turned down Fortis application to install them due to the lack of benefits in proportion tot he cost, but now that the BCUC has been defanged, this billion dollar boondoggle won't be an issue.

The second problem is that with smart meters will come time of day billing, but the $60 billion + long term contracts for electricity from private power, do not pay different rates for time of day from the producers. This means Hydro could be selling power at a huge loss depending on the time of day (not to mention that most of the power is going to be sold at a huge loss anyway because of extremely generous subsidized contracts to private producers)

@ telus employee

You're correct.

The only way smart metering makes any sense is if consumer control of timing will result in a cost savings to the customer on their hydro bill directly.

Reducing demand does nothing positive unless it actually is accompanied with a savings for the customer - sweetheart deals help the producer and address their bottom line.

What should be happening is developing a system where a consumer who decides to wash clothes and dishes at non-peak times (for example) will immediately get the positive feedback of a reduction in the hydro bill.

Otherwise, the reward is too distant and diffuse and, for the most part, simply contributes to the bottom line of the folks who are the real problem in this equation - ie the for-profit private power pirates.

Orwell be praised

Smart metering may give new meaning to "freezing in the dark.".
I can only hope the gas company doesn't go the same way.

"Consumer advocates fear the costs could be greater than the savings for many households. They also worry that the meters will make it easier for utilities to terminate service -- so easy that they will disconnect power for small arrearages that wouldn't have caused a termination in the past.

What's more, the cost to consumers could go beyond the extra charges imposed by utilities. That's because consumers usually are left to their own devices (literally) when it comes to adding the in-home displays and home-area networks that use data from the meters to control appliances and other pieces of equipment.

"What we're most concerned about is that consumers realize real benefits from the meters" from the start, says Michelle Furmanski, general counsel for the Texas House Committee on State Affairs, which is considering legislation that could establish more protections against disconnections.

Ms. Furmanski says that her committee is also looking into the lack of information on meter deployments that is available to the public. The utilities have claimed "trade secret" protections for important financial details about their meter programs, including contract terms with vendors. Such secrecy makes it impossible for consumers to analyze why costs for what appear to be similar services vary so much among utilities."
http://www.turn.org/article.php?id=848

Cost of being a small producer is prohibitive

In reality, it will cost you about $3,000, beyond the two-way meter & generating equipment to become a net producer. You have to have a safety interrupt that disconnects you if the grid goes down. This is to prevent the line workers from getting shocked.

Second, as a net producer you get paid little for your electricity, not even what you would pay for it as a residential customer.

The theory of selling to the grid is a great thing. In reality, it will never earn back it's cost in your lifetime.

You're better off hooking up your solar PV panels to batteries and use them in your home, recharge an all-electric car, run a DC fridge or freezer (Sundanzer), etc.

GWest - power is too cheap in BC

The reason it is so difficult to accomplish anything in BC is because electricity is too cheap to justify any significant actions. It's part of our birthright to have the second cheapest power in Canada and one of the lowest in North America. Even our stepped rate saved money for a lot of people, reducing the incentive for conservation.

Europe has had high prices for years for two reasons: higher 'fuel' costs and the fact that after WWII, cash-strapped governments heavily taxed electricity to raise money to rebuild their war-ravaged countries. Add to that a generation of people who suffered through the privations resulting from years of war and therefore treated energy as a valuable resource. This attitude was passed on to following generations.

I don't disagree Dave49 - however, consider the following:

Cheap and abundant Hydro Power provides BC with a classic economic competitive advantage and the reason this place once was an attractive place for industry - for example Alcan/Kitimat - to locate here.

Given the fact nearly all the rest of our advantages over competitors have been frittered or given away, why would we not continue to try and use cheap power wisely? I encourage you to read this to look at how California has managed to keep their per capita energy use down while use has increased everywhere else.

http://www.energy.ca.gov/commissioners/rosenfeld_docs/2000-10_ROSENFELD_AUTOBIO.PDF

We may need higher electricity prices - but not to provice energy for private businesses to export it across the 49th parallel for profit.

These are public resources - they should only be usd to advance the public good - private profit has not, and is not, proving to be what I'd call a public good.

Cheers.

erratum

last to paras should read:

We may need higher electricity prices - but not to provide energy for private businesses to export across the 49th parallel for profit.

These are public resources - they should only be used to advance the public good - private profit has not, and is not, proving to be what I'd call a public good.

Orwell indeed!

Right, the stores keep track on which items we purchase and now the utilities will keep track on our power Consumption, when and how we use it.
Seems every governmemt department keeps tab on everything!
Yup 1984 is here! only a few decades late.

Smart metering and the future for BC Hydro

BC Hydro is now required to have smart metering in place in BC by 2012...part of the deal that lets them build Site C with as little oversight as the government can manage.This will be easy in BC since there are so few accounts t o smart meter. It quite different in the UK.Smart meters will have to be in place in all locations in the UK by 2020..There its a huge problem since there are some 20 plus kinds of electrical suppliers, and legally you may switch your electrical supplier every day at no cost to you with a simple on line keystroke. There is no fixed preferred technology for smart metering within the industry and the government has declared that ALL the costs for the switch will be borne by the companies and the consumers. Only one electricity supplier has started...they raised their rates, and picked a supplier...which is causing fear both among the multiple suppliers of electricity, and consumers.

rather than sell surplus power back to the grid

I'd sell it to my neighbours directly at our own terms. Of course, they will try to make that illegal for "safety reasons", they never miss a chance to criminalize the citizenry where monopoly is involved.

Another gouge from the Gordo

This entire smart meter scam is crock, designed primarily to allow crooked American utilities and corrupt governments to gouge the taxpayer by stealth. For BCHydro the idea is to cover up the doubling of rates need to payoff the Gordo's stockbroker cronies in the pirate power business.

Ripping people off for peak power so they will stay up late losing sleep trying to save money doing the wash at 1 am, watching old TV movies at 3 am, saving lighting cruising the net and reading newpapers at 4 AM and running the dishwasher at 5 Am is absurd. Turning off the power on their super energy efficient water heaters, fridges and freezers while at work so they can come home to a cold shower, warm beer, and soft ice cream is not going to happen. All this inconvenience so Gordo can stuff his and his stockbroker pals pockets over at Pirate power with more moolah.

Farhagi's silly 20% saving would disappear soon as people got over the novelty. Machines are here to serve the people not the reverse.

Puget Sound Energy installed advanced meters in 2001 but discontinued time-of-use prices in 2002 after most customers saved less than $2 a month.

BCHydro dumps power from its dams in peak periods and lets the river flow fill em up in off peak. As such the main advantage to BCHydro in the unlikely event that much load shifting occurred would be to make more money selling peak power to California taking advantage of our sleepless citizens.

News to Farhangi, BCHydro does not run its turbines backwards to store power - a specially designed extremely expensive facility is required to do this.

The other supposed benefit to the overall grid is that there will be less of a need for high capital cost generation plant to supply power for fossil generated peak load. This is only true for American utilitys that face high costs to build, and fire up, "peaking" plants that operate only the 10 to 15 stifling summer days when electricity usage soars. BCHydro already has Burrard Thermal for those few very cold winter days.

If we assumed $500 a pop average for the entire smart meter gig, we'd need about $1B to do BC's 1.8 Million meters. That seems to be what BCHydro has budgeted.

If that $1B was spent on nuclear power it would increase BCHydro's capacity by more than the Site C dam - between 10 and 20% - depending on when the nuclear build took place. This is a much better return than than the miniscule 3% return on investment Californias PG&E is expecting from Smart meters.

Other than saving a few bucks laying off its meter readers, the main benefit to BC would be an almost free 1 Gigabit a second broadband link into every home and business in BC. The cost of ovelaying the Smart meter communication channel with 1 gigabit/sec broadband would amount to less than $100 bucks one time per power meter.

Unfortunately, all that would do is allow Gordo to stuff his pockets with campaign donations by using it as a threat to gouge Shaw and Telus.

Smart meters are the way to

Smart meters are the way to go (and smart grids). Electricity costs in BC are NOT LOW -- that is, at the margin. More specifically, the cost of producing extra kwh when capacity is operating at 100% is much higher than the average cost we pay on our bills. Smart meters will (if they are properly designed and introduced) lead to major changes in consumption as folks shift to non-peak times for high demand activities, and take measures to get rid of the current waste (appliances and lights that are always on..). That's not to say the Liberals have it right: their heritage rates for big industries, their willingness to pay high prices for power that doesn't serve the peaks, etc. are a travesty. But the issue is to make proper use of this technology, not to ignore it.

Don't disagree frank2

But I think the key to success is passing on the savings to customers - not creating more profits for IPP pirates.

That's what the CEOs program is all about - it certainly isn't about conservation and sensible ways of keeping costs down.

California has shown the way - for the last 30 years - Campbell has done nothing and will do nothing - unless there is something in it for the folks who put him (and keep him) in power.

Furthermore, the current system for selling individually produced consumer power back into the grid is as big a joke as Campbell is.

smart meter security

Isn't.

There appears to be no surefire way to keep the hackers out of the system shutting down individual homes, appliance, neighbourhoods or even cities. Some utilities have already cancelled net access to critical pole mount switches,

consumption shift NOT

Puget power found no consumption shift.

BC Hydro has tons of capacity and Burrard Thermal when it needs it.

Burrard Thermal is much cheaper than Pirate power.

Smart Grid - Not so Smart.

Mark my words, the public will rue the day that the so-called Smart Grid was every shoved down their throats.

First off, the USA, after their deregulation, can't even manage the Stupid Grid, so how can you believe they will manage the Smart Grid? The Worst Blackout in North American History was caused by a Lawyer run Utility, big fat bonuses and unlimited corporate perks for the executives. Cutbacks in maintenance, cutbacks in engineering, piss-off low level managers with the idiotic decisions of incompetent senior management, so the best quit or become apathetic.

Result:

http://www.redorbit.com/news/general/22704/firstenergy_blamed_for_blackout_in_report/index.html

How about getting the trees trimmed from High Voltage Power lines. “you mean we’d have to cancel our corporate junket to Tahiti to pay overtime for f---ing Tree Trimming? Screw that.”

So big Heat Wave, summer in BC, the Wind Turbines are idle, the run-of-river hydro is low, power exports are required by contract to supply air conditioning to California. Simple solution, change pricing so first 100 watts to BC residents is regular 10 cents per kwh, after that any power consumption is $1 per kwh. In other words, BC residents - no air conditioning, use the propane fired barbecue instead of the stove. And if you don't like it buy a cheapo Wal-Mart generator, with 10% efficiency and burn gasoline to generate your electricity. Big Oil is going to love that. And business & industry will switch to small, inefficient NG power plants or fuel cells, and burn fossil fuels like there is no tomorrow. Another Bonus for Big Oil/NG. This distributed energy is just a plan to shift energy production to Fossil fuels and away from Nuclear.

It would make vastly more sense to mass produce home battery systems, 1 kwh per household @ $150 per kwh, would do more to supply peaking energy and cheaper than the entire Smart Grid, and give the Household control rather than the Big Utility.

Instead of the “Smart Grid”, what we need to focus on is the Robust Grid, which has low vulnerability to Natural Disasters, Solar Flares and EMP weapons. If the 1859 Solar Storm recurred, as it may in 2012, we will face the collapse of our power distribution system, which would take years to repair, and this wonderful Smart Grid, with Wind Farms, Solar Power plants and Run-of-River Hydro spread out over thousands of sq. miles WOULD BE TOAST!

The coming Solar Storm:

http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/2010/03/solar-storm-of-century.html

EMP Weapons:

http://alfin2100.blogspot.com/2009/03/iran-north-korea-building-emp-weapons.html

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=43956