What are smart meters and what is the governments plan for them?
Smart meters allow electricity distributors to track how much electricity is used by a consumer and what time of day that electricity is used. When combined with time-of-use pricing, this allows customers to reduce their overall demand for electricity and to shift their consumption to off-peak times such as at night and on weekends. Smart meters are part of the government’s broader energy plan create a conservation culture, address rates and provide consumers with the tools they need to manage their energy consumption and costs. Smart meters also are an important tool for utilities in managing the electricity system with more efficiency and improved reliability. The government set targets to install smart meters in 800,000 households by 2007 and in all Ontario households by 2010. To date, over 1.5 million smart meters have been installed by Ontario utilities, and development of a data management entity is well underway. Consumers in a number of communities are already being billed usin
