{"id":4649,"date":"2014-07-03T01:09:47","date_gmt":"2014-07-03T08:09:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/?p=4649"},"modified":"2014-07-03T01:11:06","modified_gmt":"2014-07-03T08:11:06","slug":"fortisbc-installing-meters-in-penticton-july-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/?p=4649","title":{"rendered":"FortisBC Installing Meters in Penticton &#8211; JULY 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to <span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stopsmartmetersbc.com\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Coalition to Stop Smart Meters BC<\/span><\/a><\/span>, \u00a0A report today from Penticton BC stated that FortisBC is installing Smart Meters in the WestBench Area of Penticton.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Past Coverage on FortisBC Smart Meter Program :<\/p>\n<h2><\/h2>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #000000;\">FortisBC Inc 2013 Advanced Metering Infrastructure CPCN<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bcuc.com\/ApplicationView.aspx?ApplicationId=359\"><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">http:\/\/www.bcuc.com\/ApplicationView.aspx?ApplicationId=359<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Fortis eyes smart meters for South Okanagan<\/span><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><i>by<\/i>\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pentictonwesternnews.com\/staff_profiles\/147165055.html\">Joe Fries &#8211; Penticton Western News<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0<i>posted<\/i> Jun 7, 2012 <i>at<\/i> 12:00 PM\u2014\u00a0<i>updated<\/i> Jun 8, 2012 <i>at<\/i> 10:55 AM<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>http:\/\/www.pentictonwesternnews.com\/news\/157899385.html<\/p>\n<p>FortisBC customers can expect to save 40 cents a month on their electricity bills if the company gets the go-ahead to install 113,000 smart meters in the Southern Interior.<\/p>\n<p>Bills won\u2019t actually go down, but \u201cwill go up less than they would otherwise,\u201d said Bob Gibney, a FortisBC senior manager who last month outlined the company\u2019s smart-meter plans for the board of the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen.<\/p>\n<p>Smart meters are already on the way for customers of the City of Penticton\u2019s electrical utility, but FortisBC, which serves outlying areas within the RDOS, has to first apply for permission from the B.C. Utilities Commission; its first such application was rejected in November 2008.<\/p>\n<p>Gibney said the company has to replace 70 per cent of its old-style meters to meet modern standards regardless, and the new technology would also help the company pinpoint power outages and improve conservation programs.<\/p>\n<p>If approved, the $47 million retrofit project would begin in 2013 and take two years to finish.<\/p>\n<p>According to Gibney, each meter would transmit for about one minute per day, and its electromagnetic radiation would be \u201cliterally thousands of times below\u201d levels deemed unsafe by Health Canada.<\/p>\n<p>Noting another common concern about smart meters, Gibney said his company has no interest in using the hourly data to see what its customers are doing with their power.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI suppose if we were really interested, we could all sit around and try to figure out: Is that a pool pump or is that the heating coming on?\u201d he allowed. \u201cBut really, that\u2019s not our business.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gibney also said the company would \u201cprobably not\u201d allow customers to opt out of the smart-meter program as the Penticton utility will.<\/p>\n<p>Nineteen FortisBC meter readers would lose their jobs in the switch, although the project would create nine new high-tech positions and the company would work with its union to transition displaced employees.<\/p>\n<p>RDOS Director Allan Patton told Gibney he\u2019s not concerned with the electromagnetic radiation from individual meters, but worries about the cumulative output in an apartment building with individually-metered units.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Director Tom Siddon said he doesn\u2019t like the idea of the company\u2019s information-capture plans: \u201cYou guys don\u2019t have a right to come down my street and put up transmitters and receivers without my consent.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>FortisBC\u2019s original smart-meter application was turned down partly due to discrepancies between the stated life expectancy of the company\u2019s meters and those in use by other Canadian utilities. It also suggested economies of scale could be had by collaborating with BC Hydro, which at the time was seeking to purchase 1.4 million of the devices for its own government-mandated retrofit program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to Coalition to Stop Smart Meters BC, \u00a0A report today from Penticton BC stated that FortisBC is installing Smart Meters in the WestBench Area of Penticton. &nbsp; Past Coverage on FortisBC Smart Meter Program : FortisBC Inc 2013 Advanced Metering Infrastructure CPCN http:\/\/www.bcuc.com\/ApplicationView.aspx?ApplicationId=359 &nbsp; Fortis eyes smart meters for South Okanagan by\u00a0 Joe Fries [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[102,191,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fortisbc","category-penticton","category-smart-meter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4649"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4649\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4651,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4649\/revisions\/4651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emrabc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}