We CAN SAY NO to Smart Meters **SPREAD THE WORD**

[mike31154]

Careful not to confuse time of day billing with tiered use billing. Not sure how long ago it was implemented here, but BC Hydro has been billing us on a two tier system for a while now. Rounding numbers up to the nearest cent, they charge me 7 cents per kW.h for the first 1376 kW.h. If I use more than that during the billing period, step 2 kicks in at 10 cents kW.h. So far I haven't reached step 2 during any billing period to date. This type of billing provides users some incentive to not waste energy, since it's to your advantage to try & stay within the step 1 bracket.

The City of Vernon has started the same billing method for water use, with Tiers A, B & C. Needless to say, once you hit Tier C with water use, things get a little pricey per M3. There won't be quite as many lush green lawns in the Vernon area in the years to come. Not necessarily a bad thing, since the Okanagan is an arid place in the summer & water is a precious resource in these parts.

As far as power rates go, we're fortunate in BC to have some of the lowest rates anywhere. We're spoiled & it's easy to get up in arms about potential rate hikes. I think what I'm trying to point out here is that regardless of smart meters, there are plenty of ways for the government & utilities to squeeze the $$$ out of the taxpayer & user, smart meters themselves are not going to change that fact. Best thing to do is take advantage of the functions the smart meter makes available to you the user in order to monitor usage & in the end, cost of what you use.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

I'm not confused. Tiered billing is happening in the Lower Mainland. Time-of-use billing is being used in Powell River. I understand the difference.

I have no beef with Tiered billing if it was fairly applied. In our case, they should double our Tier 1 allotment since we have two households on one bill. They don't. That means we have most of our electrical usage billed at Tier 2 since two families are using the same meter.