Retarded tinfoil hats part deux

what it is, is a waste of a billion dollars and a virtual hand out to friends of the government. i don't buy the "RF makes me feel shitty" argument.

except we end up $500M ahead in 2012 dollars..

keep up..

BC super clean hydro one that merely dams a river, changes ecosystems and floods the land your food comes from

BC dams aren't flooding fertile farmland, they flood valleys full of trees… yes, some land goes underwater, but BC is like 1/8th the size of the entire United States in land area.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/04/19/bc-site-c-announcement-peace-river-dam.html

also, BC does not buy power from nuclear plants. BC is connected to the WA state grid, which is also highly hydroelectric (grand coulee dam, etc).

also, BC does not buy power from nuclear plants. BC is connected to the WA state grid, which is also highly hydroelectric (grand coulee dam, etc).

to be fair…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Generating_Station

is Nuclear, 1 GE BWR, 1150MW, 4% of WA power production.

Only issue I can see with smart meters is the huge increases in bills that some have experienced.

WA and OR have so much excess hydroelectric capacity, they built this to send power to southern CA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie

Only issue I can see with smart meters is the huge increases in accurate bills that some have experienced.

FYP.

FYP.

I don't see how a large bill for a home that had the power turned off is considered accurate.

Only issue I can see with smart meters is the huge increases in bills that some have experienced.

While there have been customer accounts of huge increases in bills (some reported in various news stories), there doesn't seem to be any proof of widespread faultiness of the smart meters. In most cases, BC hydro simply says that the new meters are accurate and the cause of the high bill was something else. BC hydro then eventually sends someone to inspect the meter for faults.
Aside from 1 smart meter that has proven to be faulty (out of a million +), there doesn't seem to be any conclusive proof that the power reading component of the meters is faulty.

http://www.theprovince.com/technology/Hydro+admits+meter+problem/6427141/story.html

At this point, the smart meters are still being read manually, so they are being used the same way as the traditional meters.
One of the details people forget is that BC hydro doesn't always send someone every month / 2 months to read the meters. Sometimes, the billing is based on an estimate that may or may not be accurate. One of our non-smart meter bills was DOUBLE our usage simply because it was an estimate. The next bill was 3 $ since it actually took us 2 extra months to reach the meter reading "estimated" in the previous bill. I prefer to pay for the actual power I consume, NOT what BC hydro estimated I consumed.
Smart meters, once transmitting should eliminate any potential human "reading" problems…

I love it when foreign visitors with dirty backyards try to chastise us for our world leading resource extraction and management practices.

Ha, yes fair cop. My point was more that any power generation comes at a cost, and reduction in infrastructure by demand levelling is a benefit - but I think you knew that. To thewalrus, tell the guys up a the Peace River that it's OK to flood that land, there's plenty more elsewhere. Can you confirm too that there is no grid connection from BC or WA to the rest of the continent? That would be a surprise.

Cheers Ben

Question for NSMB electrical geeks: Aside from their remote info transmission capacity, do smart meters measure energy consumption differently? Is the measurement technology fundamentally different or does it simply add a digital screen that provides more info?

Luddites

i dont know if you are right about that kn. but good job on teh name calling..that shows you are a much higher quality human being..

Oh come now … is that what you call "name calling"?

Lud·dite
n.
1. Any of a group of British workers who between 1811 and 1816 rioted and destroyed laborsaving textile machinery in the belief that such machinery would diminish employment.
2. One who opposes technical or technological change.

I say it's calling it as I see it. Arguments con are flimsy, ill-informed and amount to nothing more than "I don't like change". Arguments pro are multitudinal, based on real science and economics, and show a path forward to better service and planning.

Kn.

Question for NSMB electrical geeks: Aside from their remote info transmission capacity, do smart meters measure energy consumption differently? Is the measurement technology fundamentally different or does it simply add a digital screen that provides more info?

Not really, no. They are fairly typical watt meters. Certainly more accurate than the old spinning gauge type. Mass produced each one costs a few hundred dollars each, they're not very advanced. If you need an extremely accurate watt meter (accurate to less than 1W), it's costly, and generally not needed except for DC electronics workbench power supplies.

You could say that the measurement methodology is very different because these are actually small computers with their own processor, OS and RAM. It can be set to, for example, measure cumulative watt-hours used between the hours of 10AM to 4PM, store that data temporarily, and report that data after the six hour period has elapsed. This could be used for time of use billing if BCHydro receives permission to do so in the future.

Another way it could be used is if a customer has an electric car charger which is set on its own timer to charge between the hours of 11PM and 6AM, in exchange for a lower electric rate, the meter would report once each morning on the overnight usage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wattmeter

In its most primitive form, a watt meter only shows the load at an instant in time, it needs some sort of storage to generate a cumulative total.

This could be used for time of use billing if BCHydro receives permission to do so in the future.

This is part of the business case so I would expect it to happen soon.

"Rate Options—Smart meters capture information that will enable BC Hydro to design new rate structures that encourage conservation during peak periods, such as voluntary time-of-use . The design of these rates will involve consultation with customers and will be subject to review and approval by the BC Utilities Commission "

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0pbnUBjtRY