'Golden meters' would cost jobs and money, Quebec unions say

Both the safety and economics of smart meters are stirring up controversy in Quebec, where the region’s energy regulatory agency is holding hearings on one utility’s plan to roll out the technology on a wide scale.

The Régie de l’énergie this week began to hear testimony on Hydro-Québec’s proposal to install smart meters across the province.

As have many other communities installing advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), Quebec is seeing residents opposed to the technology for a variety of reasons. One common worry — the potential health impact from radiofrequency waves used to deliver data to and from smart meters — came up Monday, according to the Montreal Gazette, when a resident complained the meters installed at his apartment complex were causing him and other family members to suffer from headaches, nausea and even heart palpitations.

Hydro-Québec, like other utilities that have faced similar opposition, says customers can opt out of the smart meters and stick with older models if they prefer … for a fee. But the cost to do so — a one-time fee of $98 and a monthly fee of $17 — has also been criticized by some.

A different kind of complaint being leveled at Hydro-Québec’s plans, though, is that the rollout would come at the expense of some 800 to 1,000 jobs, including meter readers, clerks, secretaries and service representatives.. The economic study commissioned by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) and other unions also reported “significant deficiencies, exaggerations and gaps” in the financing plans for the smart-meter rollout.

To get its arguments out to the public, the labor unions have launched what is probably one of the most clever anti-smart-meter websites we’ve seen yet: Compteurs en Or (“golden meters”). The lottery-theme site invites visitors to “jouez,” or play, using a virtual lottery ticket that says, “grattez et decouvrer ce que vous perdez” (scratch and discover what you lose). Each “scratch-off” features a different objection to the smart meter technology.

Hydro-Québec says the new smart meters are safe and offer customers “many practical advantages, including remote disconnection and connection when they move and faster outage detection, which means faster service restoration.”

It also says the metering rollout, which carries an initial cost of $100 million, would cut customer costs by $300 million over the next 20 years.

http://cupe.ca/municipalities/golden-meters-cost-hydro-quebec-104