NEWS PHOTO COLLIN GALLANT Rural power provider EQUS will be installing an automated meter system in its area arounf Medicine Hat and throughout southeastern Alberta in 2020, the rural electrification association announced this spring.
cgallant@medicinehatnews.com@CollinGallant
Automated power meters will be coming to parts of rural Cypress and Forty Mile counties in 2020, according to power provider EQUS, which began this spring the process of modernizing its power grid across Alberta.
“Collectively we felt that it was important for the membership to look at the future, like smart grids and all that holds, but also help them today,” said Pat Bourne, CEO of EQUS. “The key driver is reliability.”
Bourne was in Cypress County on Wednesday for the rural electrification association’s membership appreciation barbecue at the EQUS shop south of Medicine Hat on Township 120.
It serves areas in 26 Alberta counties, including areas of the southeast from the Hat to Bow Island and south to the Montana Border, as well as Vauxhall.
Central Alberta customers will see installation proceed this fall, while northern and southern Albertans will be serviced next spring.
The technology has been in place for City of Medicine Hat utility customers for years. It broadcasts information like meter readings to collection points at frequencies lower than traditional radio.
That, Bourne admits, can be challenging in rural Alberta’s wide open spaces, but deciding on a service provider after four sets of testing, EQUS gained some national acclaim for the initiative.
The technology is generally used in urban centres with a comparatively tight grouping of customers, and is advertised as a way to cut outage times, lower maintenance costs and give greater ability to customers to tailor energy use.
It can more quickly locate and isolate outages, leading to less time on the clock for crews.
Bourne said it will allow rural customers on farmsteads and acreages to access smart technology for their homes while farm and ranch operators can better control business costs.
The effort to switch out meters and create monitoring infrastructure will cost about $9 million. It was launched in June.
“The world is changing and people want to manage their energy use,” said Bourne.
The new meters will also offer bi-directional metering as standard, meaning they are plug-in ready for solar arrays, giving the customer the ability to put power on the grid for credit.
Time-of-day billing could also lead to major savings for farm operators, said Bourne, who could tailor heaviest power draw, such as irrigation pumping, to times of the lowest energy cost.
At the same time as the meters are installed at members’ property, the EQUS shop on Township Road 120 in Cypress County will be outfitted with solar panels.
Medicine Hat utility customers began receiving similar meters in 2012, though the lengthy program saw holdouts and controversy. All customers in Medicine Hat had so-called smart meters installed by 2017.
In 2014, SaskPower removed more than 100,000 meters from homes after eight connection point fires were reported, but that Crown agency is now expanding its automated reading service for commercial customers.
