First we are asked to believe that the $930-million investment to install smart meters for 1.5 million customers ($620/customer) will pay for itself through cost savings and not a rate increase. BC Hydro gross sales are roughly 4 billion/year, but of that, only 9% is profit that can be re-invested into the infrastructure or about 1 million/day and that is pretty much all spoken for in real upgrades. You know, things that actually create electricity and protect the environment, etc. So we are to believe that they will find another 3 times that much by laying off meter readers.
Next we are asked to ignore any misgivings we have about health concerns. Now I don’t personally have any concern about the emissions that the smart meters will put out, but I stand by the rights of people who do. They should not be railroaded into accepting something that they are not comfortable with. There has been no serious attempt to study this or any reasonable about of time given for others to do so either.
Next, we are asked to accept that the thousands of customers who are complaining that their bills have jumped 50% or more since the installation of the smart meters are just using that much more electricity. And the 1000 meters that were taken back off were not suspected of being defective either. No really, they are fine, it was always part of the plan to put them on and take them off again! (do I smell a cost overrun?)
Honestly? I have seen this before with water meters. New smart water meters were put on in Atlanta, GA recently and bills soared for some residents. In the end, people were forced (at their own expense) to install secondary third party meters to track the real usage in order to fight the bills.
Perhaps when the smart meters are installed the old meters should be left on as a double check against the accuracy. Then there would be no doubt and no need to take the new ones off just to test them.
I am all for keeping up with technology but when an extremely costly upgrade is pushed through as fast as this against the will of a significant proportion of the people and without regard to a mounting number of accuracy complaints and with no clear means to pay for it other than a promise that it will come out of cost savings that cannot be demonstrated... Well what can I say? Higher taxes and cost of living; reduced rights of individuals; governmental arrogance; it’s all par for the course in BC under the current government.
