Vast majority of BC Hydro customers now have smart meters

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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – If you still don’t have a smart meter, you’re in the minority. BC Hydro has installed them for 80 per cent of the province.

So far, 1.5 million meters have been installed. Cindy Verschoor with BC Hydro claims the corporation will be getting to about 300,000 customers by the end of the year. But she says three per cent of people in the province are holding out, refusing to get a smart meter.

“If the customer has asked us to delay the installation, we’ll continue working with them on a solution,” she explains.

Verschoor can’t say if they will be able to force people into getting them. “There’s been no final decision made yet on how we will actually address that. We’ve have over 4,000 customers change their minds once they’ve actually had the facts.”

Those facts include just how much it will cost BC Hydro and consumers to run two systems. “It’s a cost related to additional infrastructure that’s required. We would have to maintain service fleet… vehicles, hand-held devices.”

She adds there are energy savings by having the new meters.

“[Those] we’ve accounted for in our business case actually come from our side of the grid — our ability to manage and measure the amount of energy we are sending to homes and businesses across British Columbia.”

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