A Vancouver electric power company?
Question: New Westminster have their own electric power company.
I see that the City of Palo Alto Power company is offering Feed-In-Tariffs for photovolatic and other home and business power generators to the City grid.
Has this been discussed locally? New West has 28,000 residential and 3000 commercial power customers.
Could the City of Vancouver or others take over their own civic Hydro (See Toronto Hydro) and move wires and power junctions underground?
Answer: Hmm, this is a new one for me. I didn’t know New West had its own electric power company. Or maybe I did, but the switch was flipped off in my brain. Anyway, I passed this question through channels to the city’s chief engineer, Peter Judd, and here’s what he had to say.
I believe places that have their own power systems got that way because of historical situations. You should ask the BCUC or Hydro what it would take for the city to do that but basically I can’t see there being any advantage. We could underground the system now if we were willing to pay for it but it would be billions. Even if we could take it over we would still have to pay the same thing. I have no reason to believe there would be any cost advantage to us doing that. It isn’t our core business. As far as the feed in is concerned, I think Hydro already has that but you should check with Hydro.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Agustin // Feb 22, 2012 at 5:33 pm
I don’t see how Vancouver would benefit from owning an electricity distribution and retail company.
Burying cables is very expensive and probably not worth the expense except in specific cases. I doubt that a City-owned utility would be more likely to bury cables than BC Hydro is.
BC Hydro has examined (is examining?) a feed-in tariff program. They currently have a net metering program. More info at http://www.bchydro.com/planning_regulatory/acquiring_power/net_metering.html
I do agree that BC Hydro should do more to encourage distributed generation, but I don’t know if having Vancouver take over would make that happen faster/better.
2 spartikus // Feb 22, 2012 at 6:58 pm
It’s the first small step to independence.
Viva La Republica!
3 Bill Lee // Mar 8, 2012 at 11:09 am
“Kelowna, Penticton, Nelson and Grand Forks also have their own utility setups off the Hydro system.”
[ If Fabula goes back to the Kootenays sometime, she might investigate. ]
No smart meters for New Westminster
http://www.news1130.com/news/local/article/319181–no-smart-meters-for-new-westminster
The Royal City runs on its own system but the old meters will soon need replacing
by Dan Burritt Jan 12, 2012 15:25:39 PM
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NEW WESTMINSTER (NEWS1130) – If you don’t like [34]smart meters, New Westminster might be for you! The Royal City has run its own power utility for more than a century, but the system is aging.
And those 32,000 old meter readers will be need to be replaced, says [35]New West utility commission boss Rod Carle.
“Within the near future, probably the next two to three years, there won’t be any mechanical meters available to anybody anyways. They all will be digital and the question is how smart do you want to make that digital meter? We’re not calling them smart meters, we’re calling them digital meters.” He says the system is getting older but they’re not ready to jump into smart meters just yet.
“We do have the opportunity. I’ve sat and talked with BC Hydro for the last six to eight months in their rollout. They have indicated that we could jump on board with them if it was an advantage and cost-effective for us to do so.” Carle says their customers pay about the same as Hydro customers. Kelowna, Penticton, Nelson and Grand Forks also have their own utility setups off the Hydro system.
4 ReenaMD // Mar 28, 2012 at 1:46 pm
New West buys its power wholesale from BCHydro, then resells to its citizens. It makes a bit of money in the process, and uses that to do maintenance, read meters, etc. Replacing meters will presumably be done but the economics are different than for BC Hydro, so the push for “smart meters” is much less. New West could, but currently doesn’t, have independent goals for power conservation.
5 Bill Lee // Jan 31, 2013 at 4:42 pm
No smart meters for New Westminster
NEWS WESTMINSTER/CKNW(AM980)
Janet Brown 1/31/2013
It may surprise you to learn the City of New Westminster is exempt from the smart meter program.
Unlike other BC communities the City of New Westminster owns its own electrical utility and does it’s own metering.
New Westminster’s Electrical Services Manager Tim Cmith says city meters are getting old and smart meters may be an option for replacement.
“But, that’s not saying what we’re going to end up doing but that’s one of the options we’re certainly going to look into.”
The City of New Westminster distributes power to 28-thousand residential customers and three thousand commercial/business customers.
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