NEW WESTMINSTER (NEWS1130) – If you don’t like smart meters, New Westminster might be for you! The Royal City has run its own power utility for more than a century, but the system is aging.
    
And those 32,000 old meter readers will be need to be replaced, says New West utility commission boss Rod Carle.
    
“Within the near future, probably the next two to three years, there won’t be any mechanical meters available to anybody anyways.  They all will be digital and the question is how smart do you want to make that digital meter?  We’re not calling them smart meters, we’re calling them digital meters.”

He says the system is getting older but they’re not ready to jump into smart meters just yet.
    
“We do have the opportunity.  I’ve sat and talked with BC Hydro for the last six to eight months in their rollout.  They have indicated that we could jump on board with them if it was an advantage and cost-effective for us to do so.”

Carle says their customers pay about the same as Hydro customers.

Kelowna, Penticton, Nelson and Grand Forks also have their own utility setups off the Hydro system.