Volunteers sought to test commercial smart meters

REGINA Saskpower is looking for 2,000 people willing to volunteer their homes or businesses for installation of a commercial smart meter, while its residential smart meters are still being tested after safety concerns from six years ago.

In 2014, residential smart meters on 10 homes shorted and caused blackening, melting and smoke.

The province directed Saskpower to remove the 108,000 smart meters it had installed across the province because of safety concerns raised by the shorted units.

Saskpower spokesperson Joel Cherry said a new version of the residential meters that initially caused issues are still being tested.

“We’re being extremely careful. We’re taking it one step at a time. We want to make sure that all the meters that are out there are safe ... Anything that we use meets our own very high, rigorous standards for meters, which is higher than industry requirements,” he said in an interview Thursday.

“It should be ready for a broader pilot sometime next year.”

In the meantime, Cherry said Saskpower wants to install the more expensive commercial smart meters on some homes to see how the meters work with their grid from a variety of buildings.

The commercial units are made by Honeywell while the residential ones are from Sensus.

Saskpower has installed 8,000 of these commercial smart meters since 2017, and Cherry said there have been no issues. By the end of 2020, Saskpower aims to have 30,000 of its existing 500,000 customers using smart meters.

Each commercial meter costs an estimated $200 more than a residential meter, said Cherry, although he could not say how much the program was expected to cost Saskpower in total.

Cherry said homeowners will not notice any difference between having a commercial smart meter instead of one of the residential ones to come later.

The smart meters are provided free of charge. Anyone interested in signing up for one can visit saskpower.com/smartsignup.