Marlene Bergsma
The Standard (St. Catharines)
September 28, 2007

If you could save six cents by running your dishwasher after midnight, would you do it?

How about saving another 30 cents by setting your clothes dryer to hum while you sleep?

Horizon Utilities – the company supplying power to 232,000 customers in St. Catharines and Hamilton – hopes you will.

So does the government of Ontario.

As part of a provincially mandated initiative, Horizon is switching all its customers to smart meters by 2010. In east Hamilton, 50,000 homes in a neighbourhood bounded by Rymal Road, Upper Wentworth and East Townline are getting the new meters this year.

In St. Catharines, about 1,000 new homes or homes that need replacement meters will get the new technology.

The idea is to track not only how much power you use, but when you use it.

By offering cheaper rates to consumers when demand is lower, industry officials hope to entice customers to switch their power-hogging appliances – like pool heaters or air conditioners – to run at off-peak hours, such as overnight, or on the weekend.

"Our electricity system is reaching capacity," said Sandy Manners, spokeswoman for Horizon Utilities. "It’s an encouragement for people to shift their usage away from peak times. We either do that, or we build more generating capacity."

Currently, about 500 north St. Catharines customers already have the meters, in the neighbourhood bounded by Niagara Street, Scott Street, Carlton Street and Government Road, Manners said.

But none of the meters are working smartly yet.

They are functioning as regular meters, which track total consumption over a billing period.

Horizon is still testing various data collection and transmission systems before deciding how customers’ hour-by-hour information will be collected and sent to utility headquarters for billing, Manners said.

In the meantime, each Horizon customer is paying 80 cents per month or about $10 per year to cover the cost of installing the new meters, Manners said.

That’s why St. Catharines Coun. Jeff Burch thinks the meters are "a huge waste of money."

The potential savings is small, Burch said, while the cost of collecting the data "is huge, and that is being passed on to the consumer.

"People have compared it to the federal gun registry, for the amount of money it is wasting," Burch said.

Burch accepts the need to reduce peak electricity demand, but prefers a system of rotating brownouts, which he says is working well in Florida.

"The way you reduce the peaks is to make people use less," Burch said.

Environmental organization Energy Probe is also skeptical about the smart meter program, saying the savings have to be big enough in order for consumers to want to change their habits.

"So far the difference between peak and off-peak is pretty slim," said Norm Rubin, a senior policy analyst. "It empowers consumers to make choices, but the problem is it’s an expensive way to do it, and whether we end up coming out ahead is yet to be seen."

Coun. Joe Kushner, who is a representative on the St. Catharines Hydro Board, which is part-owner of Horizon, said he supports the move to smart meters.

He agrees they’re expensive, "but I would hope the technology would improve to bring down the cost.

"If it’s effective, then rates will be less than they would have been without the smart meters," Kushner said.