Installation of smart meters resumes
Saskpower takes cautious approach to expanding non-residential pilot project
REGINA More commercial and industrial smart meters will be installed in Saskatchewan soon, but residential smart meters haven’t received the green light for use in the province — including those manufactured by Sensus.
The first batch of 500 commercial and industrial smart meters were installed in 2017 after they were thoroughly tested by Saskpower and an internationally recognized third party.
Saskpower is taking a cautious and phased approach to expanding the non-residential smart meter pilot after it had to uninstall 108,000 Sensus residential smart meters across the province in 2014, due to the malfunction of 10.
“We’ve learned from 2014,” said Tim Eckel, vice-president of asset management, planning and sustainability with Saskpower.
As a result of the failure, Saskpower negotiated with Sensus a $24-million refund, an $18-million credit for a future order, and a $5-million research and development fund to research and meet safety standards.
The second batch of 7,500 meters will start being installed for commercial and industrial customers beginning on Monday, Eckel said.
“This time around, we created our own specifications for Saskatchewan that’s above industry standard,” he said.
The Crown corporation has yet to find a vendor that meets Saskpower’s rigorous safety standards for residential smart meters and passes the same level of testing applied to the commercial and industrial meters.
“We’re still working with Sensus and we believe they ’ll be able to deliver us a meter,” Eckel said.
The residential smart meters
must be able to handle higher voltages and the province’s weather conditions.
“It’s like any device when you have to operate in -30 to 30-plus temperatures,” Eckel said.
“That’s a real challenge. We want to make sure that the meters we’re getting can accommodate that,” he continued.
The next batch of commercial and industrial meters will go to Saskpower’s largest business customers across the province, Eckel said.
In light of the additional workload for Saskpower employees, about 12 journeyed line technicians and electricians will be hired to help install the smart meters, he said.
An additional 750 small-andmedium-business customers will be notified later in the pilot that they will be receiving smart meters.
Eckel expects all non-residential meters will be installed by the end of the year.
Each meter is tested before and after installation.
A commercial meter exchange takes approximately 45 minutes, said Devin Kress, metering electrician supervisor with Saskpower.
For most of those meter exchanges, the power stays on but the meter is de-energized.
“We use external transformers to step down large voltage and currents to the meter,” Kress said. “Before we pull an existing meter, we test the service and compare the results to the metering to make sure the metering is accurate because of the external instrument transformers and external wiring that goes to the meter.”
The testing of the meters takes most of the time, Kress said.
Smart meters will eliminate billing estimates, and in the near future, customers will be able to check their power consumption through an online application.
The smart meter pilot is an early step in building a smart grid for the province.
In the future, this will mean shorter power outages for customers, because the smart meters will send a signal when there’s a loss of power.
Every year there are tens of thousands of outages in the province, Eckel said.
“Some of them are just single customers, others are more widespread.”
Eckel noted there are 85 million smart meters already installed in North America.
“I feel very comfortable that these meters are safe,” he said. “Our employees are not at risk and the public is not at risk.”