LOWER MAINLAND (NEWS1130) – If you lost power yesterday during the storm, you still had to call BC Hydro to report the outage, even if you have a new smart meter installed.
Simi Heer with Hydro says that new technology is supposed to notify them automatically, but that isn’t happening yet.
“The team is using them for testing. However, the entire system is not up yet, so we still have meters to install and the smart network still needs to get in place as well.”
She says by next storm season, we should see shorter restoration time and you won’t have to call.
“The new meters will be able to notify us automatically when a problem has occurred and crews will be able to identify problems more quickly as well because the meters will help us pinpoint issues. Now, crews actually, at times, have to do a visual inspection of circuits to see if they can find a problem when an outage has occurred and with the smart meters and smart grid that will be pinpointed for them.”
At one point yesterday, there were 55,000 people in the Lower Mainland without power and Heer tells us crews had to deal with a lot of old technology.
“It’s quite a unique event when you have such a large storm move through a city like Vancouver where there are outages occurring throughout the day and crews are able to restore power to big chunks of circuits and then they move onto the smaller issues and those are things that you just have to knock off one at a time and it does take time.”
This winter season, if you lose power make sure you call BC Hydro to report the outage.
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Deb – sounds like you are one of the only folks to comment on this page that has any idea of what a smart meter actually does. Or the fact that these meters will save BC consumers over one billion dollars in theft over the next decade. Unless you enjoy paying money for power that people steal – over 100 million dollars a year, then you should keep quiet. You are paying for criminals to have power for free. Is that your idea of a good plan? Onto the RF, again these folks are very uneducated on the matter. Im sure they are writing their comments on their ipads, using wireless technology, with their microwave running in the background. RF is everywhere. Please feel free to disconnect yourself from all technology and then complain. Oh wait – that would be impossible. Before you run down BC Hydro, remember that they are your friends, families and neighbours. They would no more so expose themselves to any negative affects than they would the general public. Its sad when propoganda masquerades as truth, but unfortunately there will always be those misinformed souls who think they know better.
And a big HURRAH for BC Hydro bringing in a system that will kill homeowners with pacemakers. Radiate family with pulsed RF in their own homes. Spending 3 billion dollars and not generate one extra once of power. Ask your hydro company how much electricity a smart meter uses to work.
So when is Hydro going to start maintaining,upgrading the rest of the grid ,like the poles and transformers that keep blowing ,or does that only happen if a smartmeter tells them to do it? Mabey theres no money left after the smeter programe. Why does business a want its customers to use less of its product.That doesnt sound like good buiness ethics??
Are these smart meters really smart? I think they are smart because they treat all of us like stupid. They are extremely dangerous to out health that’s a fact. Many people are reporting these problems, I am one of them. The system is not in place yet, when it will be it will fry us like chickens. BC Hydro is not saying the truth about these meters. They say they are talking for one minute something with the utility (BC Hydro) but they not say that they are talking with each othere in the radius of up to 5 km. Imagine how many meters are in that radius? and they talk to each other 24/7 and we are in that area, we are exposed to them all the time. It is like living in a microvave. There are some claims in the USA that these meters are very powerfull, 60 to 160 times stronger than cellphones.
Imagine having powerfull antenna behind your back working all the time. So if we want to enjoy our lifestyle like before, we better make sure they will be removed all of them now, or later it can be to late for many of us. Read more here;
http://www.stopsmartmetersbc.ca/html/?page_id=3146
http://stopsmartmeters.ca/
http://www.stopsmartmetersbc.ca/html/?page_id=1116
Anatol
BC Hydro has paid 3 BILLION dollars for the Smart meter program. We will still have to call them when the power goes out because the did not want to spend that money on better hydro poles. How much extra power did we get for 3,000,000,000 dollars? Nothing.
Health Experts Caution About Smart Meters
More than 50 scientists and medical professionals from 20 countries call for precaution regarding deployment of wireless “smart meters.”
http://www.prlog.org/11978228
Wow we pay extra for those Crappy Meters and still get no benefits ………………Good Scam …