I'm pretty sure Vic Toews knows kinky. He cheated on his wife by having sex with the babysitter, and fathered a child with her. And he's an MP, for crying out loud. I suppose it's nothing like being found dead with a bin liner over your head and having a slice of orange stuck in your mouth and wearing women's clothes though.

Hmm, what if our insurance company gets a whiff of this data and sees that we are home but not using our heat pump very often? They might decide to increase our rates because we are using the wood stove more than they expected.

It could be any unforeseen thing, really, and details of the what-could-bes are unimportant. If you can understand that I don't want to volunteer potentially incriminating information, that's good enough for me.

The meter that's already there has almost certainly been amortized by this point and it's a lot cheaper to replace all of them at once than it is to do ones individually as they break. Plus, I'm sure that they're probably easier to check than the previous model. Doing the measurement before the meter has the problem of not being legal. There's a legal point of demarcation for utilities, and measuring in the middle of the utilities responsibility is just going to lead to lawsuits.

Why would it? IIRC we moved to a system which allows that mainly because it was really tough to deal with solar cells on the previous system. We're still doing one flat rate for the first kwh a month and a second for anything over that, with no change in price due to the time of day.

If you view it as inevitable, you've got other issues.

By the way, BC Hydro isn't planning on implementing time-of-use rates.

Because that is what they are doing elsewhere.
http://www.ontarioenergyboard.ca/OEB/Consumers/Electricity/Electricity+Prices#tou

I don't recall saying it's inevitable. But if it is, at least I can buy some time to let early adopters work the bugs out.



Correction: the FAQ claims BC Hydro is not planning to introduce TOU pricing.

Oh come on, do you really think that BC Hydro would double back on something as significant as TOU pricing? They're already in trouble for cooking the books and attempted to raise the rates again. If they even think about doing it, even the BC Liberals will step in.

Maybe, maybe not. If I don't upgrade, it's a non-issue.

I'm just speaking generally here and most of this is hearsay from conferences I've been to. I don't have any direct experience installing a smart system other than replacing old dial meters with AMRs that would send their signals through the power lines which could then be read in the main office. I don't have a lot of experience with demand side management yet either.

This is what I know from where I live, Canada may be different. From what I have gathered, yes, some smart systems can tell what appliances you are using like Darling_Jimmy pointed out. The reason they want to do this is so that they can turn off some load (like the air conditioner) for 15 minutes during peak hours. It would hardly be noticeable in the temperature of the house and by alternating which services this happens to down the chain, this 15 minute down time can reduce grid strain by a lot (I'd have to check to see the %'s). Most people generally wake up around the same time in the morning and come home around the same time. During this time, they might turn on the lights, turn on Mr. Coffee, open up the fridge for a couple minutes before they decide what they want for breakfast, let the shower warm up, turn on the morning news, check e-mail, and maybe finish drying some laundry. Every one doing this at the same time for one hour adds up to quite a bit of load during that hour.

Basically the power company is faced with either trying a smart system to provide incentives that will hopefully reduce inefficiencies or else rebuilding the whole grid with much bigger wires because it is under too much strain already. Bigger wire means bigger structures. You're going to pay for it one way or another if you're on the grid, whether you decide to use during peak hours or just get the cost of upgrading the grid passed onto you in utility bills or taxes. The electricity quality from a system with a lot of strain is low compared to an entity that can produce its' own power.

Around where I live, grid strain is the worst in the summer with air conditioning load and irrigation load. The system is maxed out in the summer. Voltage regulators are stepping up the voltage as high as they can and substation transformers are humming loudly and are as hot as they can get without blowing up. During cooler months, people don't use electric heat and the system might only be running at 25-50% of what it's ideal load should be (maxed out is not ideal load either.) Power factor was mentioned earlier and something that can also lead to a poor power factor besides inefficient consumer side electronics or appliances are lightly loaded transformers on the utility's side of the system. So transformers that have to be big enough to handle quick bursts of peak load are then contributing to bad power quality when that load quickly disappears. The utility here just puts up more capacitors on the power lines if the power factor gets bad. I don't know how well that works in the big picture.

Another thing to consider is that anyone who wants to install an alternative energy system should want a smart meter. Batteries are expensive and the most cost effective way to store power is by hooking up to the grid and selling it. That is, if your utility allows it. Consider this. If prices follow demand and rise during peak hours, many small producers that have solar panels on their roof could sell during peak hours and help increase supply, thus hopefully reducing price during peak hours. If it's done right, people could choose who to buy power from, increasing the choice on the market. Think of it as a p2p system. Of course, no one seems to like lobbyists, and guess who has the most lobbyists in my state's legislature? Yep, electric power utilities. We've finally at least been able to recently get net metering in my state with excess power over the net metering limit still being sold as an avoided cost back to the utility.

I can understand the concern here. I don't want utilities to control what I do either, but the main thing they are trying to do is provide incentives to increase efficiency. My ideal situation would be off-grid with a battery bank. The best way to do this though is to reach for the low-hanging fruit first. You really don't need that much electricity. Designing houses to take advantage of the environment will reduce load requirements by A LOT. Planting wind breaks helps quite a bit too (I suppose people in urban areas probably can't do this.) Refrigeration, freezers, and lighting are the main things you need. Most other things are conveniences. Installing solar panels, inverters, and batteries without conserving energy any other way is reaching straight for the high-hanging fruit.

Edit: One bad thing in my experience about electronic meters is that they don't hold up to lightning strikes very well. Power lines get struck by lightning a lot more than one might think. They're not cheap meters either, but some companies that make meters offer a buyback program for bad meters.

I think you and I have a different view of what constitutes "incriminating information". You're probably better served by strengthening and enforcing data sharing laws than worrying about upgrades that make your electrical grid better and less costly. As well, why would your insurance company care how much you use your wood burning stove? Are you lying to them about it? That is even supposing they could tell (a well insulated house will take way less time on a heat pump to keep at an even temp).

Are you sure about this? Cause the meter is likely still their property and they likely have the right in your contract with them to update and replace it as you and they deem necessary... hell if you put it in an enclosure that prevents them being able to read it you could well be breaking not only the contract but the law :S

Or they'll just bust it open and charge you for the extra labor. I doubt anything the OP is building will stand up to a big pair of bolt cutters and a sledge.

Who knows, maybe he's running an illicit drug grow operation. That's the main reason I can think of for being worried about the government knowing how much power one is using. And I'm not even sure it applies to Canada.

Then he should know that power meter usage isn't the only thing they look for. They use planes to look for heat plumes and extra AC units, those alone will get them a warrant in the US, don't know about up north.
I'll bet you have some interesting stories:)

I've got a few. I didn't really like working at a power company that much but it did introduce me to all types of people to increase my worldview a little bit. We tried to be nice though, being a small company whose customers we'd see in the bar all the time.