I came home from work a couple weeks back to see that the building I live in had sprouted one of those shiny new smart meters.
On further investigation, I discovered that every living thing within 50 metres was dead, my identity was being traded between organized crime syndicates, and somehow Gordon Campbell was premier again.
Actually it was a pretty routine evening. But you don't need me to tell you that lots of folks are up in arms over smart meters. Some of
the most up in arms have been touring North Shore councils to drum up support for a moratorium on the wireless meters.
This is misguided. Not because we shouldn't question what Hydro or the province is up to, but because we're asking the wrong questions. Let's go through the objections raised so far.
1) They will murder your children.
A smart meter is basically the same meter as before with a little computer and a cellphone attached.
Having one bolted to the side of your home exposes you to as much radiation as someone pausing by your door once a day and sending a text message. You soak up far, far more radiation walking along Lonsdale Avenue. Readers of this column will recall my scorn of this paranoia in February, when cellphone antennas were getting people angry. Somehow this crazy theory refuses to die.
Granted, three months after my cell antenna column, the World Health Organization hedged, and said radio waves were a "possible carcinogen." Sadly, by the time this information got to anti-meter campaigners, the word "possible" had come adrift, as did the WHO's carefully worded disclaimer regarding levels of exposure. We have been awash in radio waves for generations, yet not one person has died as a result, planet-wide.
2) They will steal your identity. Identity theft is a big deal. It's a hugely expensive, time-consuming catastrophe if a crook gets his or her hands on your driver's licence number, social insurance number, credit card details, PIN, email password or even your Blockbuster card - OK, maybe not that last one anymore. But my power usage figures? If someone took the trouble to build a device that would pick up my meter's signal, and they had the advanced cryptography skills to decipher it, they would learn that my four-person household used 684 KWh last month. That's the actual figure I got from Hydro. Perhaps if this supervillain hung around watching long enough, he could deduce which days we did our laundry, or what time we came home from work. Or he might just wait to see the lights come on in the windows. But, supervillains, if you're reading, 684 KWh. Let's see what you've got.
Meter info is pretty barebones. It's also protected by the same laws that shield your tax records, your medical records, and so on. If you don't trust Victoria to keep those private either, fair enough, but at that point smart meters are the least of your worries.
3) Your Hydro rates will rise.
Well, duh. That's inevitable. The question is whether these widgets will slow that rise. Hydro, of course, says they will. Over 20 years, they expect $930 million in costs but a juicy $1.6 billion in savings, most of which comes not from consumer conservation but a more efficient - smarter - operation of the power grid.
Hydro's case is quite compelling, and a pair of non-Hydro engineers I spoke with said you really couldn't run the grid any more wastefully than we do now. Knowing where the load is and where the power is at any given time seems like a fundamentally good idea. I was pretty surprised we had no way of knowing this stuff before.
Hydro claims that the meter program will pay for itself and more by 2033. Smart people narrow their eyes when their government says something will pay for itself. This is a good moment for ratepayers to print off Hydro's business plan - available online - and see if the promises come true over the next two decades. That is responsible citizenry, as opposed to getting distracted by supervillains like Radiation Man.
I'll add, at the risk of sounding a bit villainous myself, that we should be paying higher rates. We British Columbians have lived in a fantasy world of cheap electricity for too long, blithely believing it has no environmental impact. We already import fossil-fuel electricity from Alberta, and there are more shocks coming. The best way to reduce use is to raise the price. If you don't believe me, get your hands on a copy of Peace Out, a brilliant documentary by Capilano University's Charles Wilkinson, also a Deep Cove resident. If we don't manage our power better soon, we are in one huge heap of trouble.
4) It's a huge Liberal conspiracy.
Almost all of the anti-meter presentations I've seen and heard find their way to the HST, and Gordon Campbell's name usually crops up as well. There are some parallels - both plans were massive policy decisions casually tossed out by a Liberal government that has grown horribly arrogant after a decade of unfettered power.
How do you believe that a billion-dollar invoice is a good thing, when it's delivered by the people who spent 18 months telling you higher taxes mean lower prices? This is the problem. What ought to be a pretty straightforward engineering question has been submerged under a spring tide of mistrust. That's why meter opponents know, just know, that whether it's radiation or privacy or price gouging, somehow the Liberals are lying. Somehow the company that installs these things won their contract through a $2,500 donation to the Liberal party. If you can buy that much government business with a $2,500 cheque, I hope one of my MLAs is reading this. Call me!
I'm not here to tell you to trust the Liberals. I'd suggest you ask your MLA why Hydro has deferred hundreds of millions of dollars in expenses in order to post a phoney "profit" that props up the provincial budget. But as far as metering goes, I also suggest you take a serious look at Hydro's business case. I think you'll agree that smart is better.
