Canada: 500 More Smart Meter Fires? en 36.000 ''slimme'' meters vervangen

Bron 1: bc-freedom.com/2017/01/29/500-more-smart-meter-fires/
29 jan. 2017

Dit is een ellende die we in Nederland nog niet hebben, voor zover ons bekend. Dit verhaal geeft wel aan dat slimme meters gevoeliger zijn voor storingen dan de ouderwetse analoge meters.

Zie ook:

‘Astonishing’: Hydro One pulling plug on 36,000 rural smart meters after years of complaints
Bron 2: news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/astonishing-hydro-one-pulling-plug-on-36000-rural-smart-meters-after-years-of-complaints
14 jan. 2017

Hydro One has taken a new approach to pesky smart meters that refuse to send a reliable signal about electricity consumption in rural Ontario.
Give up on them.

The utility, which was ordered by its provincial masters to install the devices, admits it has decided to manually read roughly 36,000 meters instead of counting on the wireless technology.

“Astonishing,” was the reaction from Lanark-area MPP Randy Hillier, who has been deluged with complaints about Hydro One billing and smart-meter suspicions.

“I’ve been banging my head against the wall for the last five years, saying we’ve got problems with smart meters in rural Ontario.” Since first being elected in 2007, no single issue has attracted as much attention in his riding, he said.

One of the main complaints, Hillier explained, is that the terrain in rural Ontario is such that the wireless meters — which send out a continuous signal to permit time-of-use billing — frequently fail. Turns out it’s absolutely true.
“The evidence has been in front of us for a long time. It doesn’t work, it hasn’t worked and now (there’s) an admission that it will never work.”

His conclusion is based on a letter from Hydro One being sent to a number of residents outside Perth in eastern Ontario, including a handful on Barries Sideroad, about five kilometres north of town.

One was dated Dec. 25, which caused Hillier to wonder whether the utility was now employing elves or festive-resistant computers. But that’s another story.
Here’s a portion: “Over the last few years, we’ve learned that it isn’t possible to economically connect all meters to the smart meter network. Nor is it possible to make all meters communicate reliably enough to issue regular time-of-use (TOU) bills based on actual meter readings.”

So the customer was told Hydro One was moving her to the so-called “two-tier” system, which charges a lower rate for the first block of kilowatt hours, then a higher amount above this threshold. The meter will be read quarterly and bills in between will be based on estimates.

Hillier is pleased with the change. Malfunctioning meters were among several issues that caused a customer relations nightmare for Hydro One in 2013 and 2014.

So much for trying to get people to use off-peak mostly! They basically admit that they cannot make the smart meters work outside of populated areas

When Hydro moved to a new billing system, it was buried with complaints, numbering in the tens of thousands. Some customers were double and tripled bills; some had no bills for months; others were comically billed millions in overcharges.

When Ontario’s ombudsman stepped in, the office of André Marin was flooded with more than 10,000 complaints. Hydro admitted its errors, even sending about a million letters of apology to its customers.

The introduction of smart meters to Ontario, mandated by the Liberal government at a cost of about $2 billion, created peak and off-peak rates that were to spark a conservation drive across the province. The results have been disappointing.



Lees verder in de categorie Berichten Internationaal | Terug naar homepage | Lees de introductie