BC Hydro employees confirmed for The Citizen this week that homeowners have no choice about getting so-called "smart meters" installed on your home. They may provide you with extra consultation, but in the end there is no avoiding the provincial power company changing out the old meters for the new ones.
They own the power, they own the cables and poles that brought it to your house, and they own the meter that measures what you do with it. However, everything on the other side of that meter is owned by you. You can use that electricity any way you wish.
Anyone not pleased about the smart meters, or anything BC Hydro does for that matter, has a lot of control over most matters electrical. You can do a great many things to reduce your power consumption, for one thing, which has the delightful double effect of cutting your own costs and handing less money over to the taxpayers' own power corporation. If you are like most British Columbians, you have probably done very little to squeeze your level of juice.
However, it is possible to go one step further, and BC Hydro does very little to promote it. The company pushes "eco-fit" products and "Energy Star" appliances, plus energy efficiency audits of your home to pinpoint ways of fixing the problems burning gratuitous electricity.
What they don't talk about, without a lot of drilling through layers on their website, is how any homeowner can tip the power table the other way. Yes, it takes some personal initiative and a hefty up-front investment, but it improves resale value of your house and the benefits start immediately.
Not only can it save you money in the long run but can actually make your power meter run in the opposite direction. You can own the power. You can own the wires that run the electricity into your house. BC Hydro becomes the one who has to deal with you. It's not enough power to get drunk on, but it can give you a pretty sweet buzz, based on the experiences in places like Toronto and Alaska where it is commonplace.
It is called the "intertie system" in some jurisdictions. BC Hydro calls it "net metering" and it has been an option in this province since 2004.
When you type "net metering" into the BC Hydro website search engine, or find it under the "Acquiring Power" heading, it tells you that installing a windmill or solar panel on your property can do more than cut down on the use of grid power, it can actually reverse the direction of your electricity bill.
"When customers with their own generation facilities produce more than they consume, they will receive a credit from BC Hydro that goes to their account and can be applied against future consumption charges. At an anniversary date, the customer will be credited for any excess generation."
There is also a BC Hydro "standing offer" to buy power from you if your particular power generation system is a little bigger than most household needs and manages to make as much as 15 megawatts.
"If it is economic for you, and you meet our fairly straightforward guidelines, you're in business," The Citizen was told by a BC Hydro spokesperson.
Households account for about 20 per cent of Canada's electricity consumption (mills, mines and factories are the real juice pigs) so if every home in Canada pushed power out instead of sucking it in, it wouldn't hurt that side of the ledger and in fact free that lucrative electricity up for sale to industry.
Furthermore, the price point of buying and installing these home-based electricity generators is coming down, and the more consumers embrace the solar panel and windmill products on the market, the cheaper it will become.
The other option is to install these power generation systems at home and cut the cord to the provincial grid altogether. There isn't a meter built that's smart enough to figure that one out.
-- Prince George Citizen
