SaskPower is expanding their commercial and industrial smart meter pilot program to businesses across Saskatchewan.
Approximately 7,500 customers will be getting the smart meters.
“It will be a wide-swath across Saskatchewan,” SaskPower spokesperson Jonathan Tremblay said. “From potential restaurants or shopping malls, all the way up to potential mines and oil fields. So we need to test a variety of business types in a variety of areas in Saskatchewan to make sure everything is working well.”
The original pilot, which launched in October, tested the functionality of 584 smart meters. Safety testing was completed prior to the program.
Only one of the 584 meters malfunctioned during the pilot, but Tremblay says it malfunctioned the way they were expecting it to.
“(It) wasn’t unexpected, a small percentage of any electronic device does malfunction,” Tremblay said. “But it malfunctioned exactly how we tested it to… it just stopped working.”
In 2014, it was a different story. Ten residential SaskPower meters malfunctioned after moisture and went up in flames, causing damage to homes.
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“They malfunctioned in a way that was really unacceptable,” Tremblay said. “There were small fires that started in the box when they malfunctioned, and that’s when we removed the 105,000 that we had installed and went back to the drawing board to create a new safety specification that would be perfect for Saskatchewan’s climate.”
The commercial and residential smart meters were created by two separate companies. The residential smart meters that caught fire in 2014 were manufactures by Sensus. Tremblay says the Crown Corporation has yet to determine whether they will use that company again.
“So we are working with them, but that doesn’t mean we’d pick them above our safety standard, that is our commitment,” Tremblay said. “We’re not going to pick one company just because we’ve had a long-lasting relationship with them. It’s great that we’ve had that relationship and we can work on that safety standard, but that safety standard is what we’re committed to and we will talk to other companies if we need to.”
SaskPower hopes to roll out the residential smart meter pilot program by the end of 2019.
“We know there are still concerns out there, and we want to reassure people that we have done our due diligence on the safety side,” Tremblay said.
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