SaskPower is set to begin installing smart meters on residences across Saskatchewan. This follows a successful pilot that saw 17,000 volunteers receive residential smart meters this year.
“Smart meters are an important part of our efforts to build a modern power grid in Saskatchewan,” said Don Morgan, minister responsible for SaskPower. “These meters will allow SaskPower to respond to outages faster, ensure accurate billing, and provide customers with detailed information about power use to help them save on their bills.”
Smart meters will allow SaskPower to detect when an outage occurs. Currently, SaskPower relies on customers to report outages. The visibility provided by smart meters will allow the company to respond more quickly.
“We are pleased with the results of the pilot and are looking forward to making the benefits of smart meters available to everyone in Saskatchewan,” said Mike Marsh, president & CEO, SaskPower. “We are beginning the program with a number of farm and rural customers because they typically receive a meter reading once a year, unlike SaskPower’s urban customers, whose meters are typically read every three months.”
Customers across the province will receive their smart meters during the next few years as supply allows. SaskPower’s deployment plan is scalable and responsive to the availability of meters, which has been affected by the ongoing global microchip shortage.
In addition to the 17,000 meters deployed during the residential pilot, an additional 45,000 commercial and industrial (C&I) smart meters have been installed provincewide. There have been no issues with any of the smart meters, which were built to SaskPower’s industry-leading specifications.
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