I was absolutely shocked when I heard that $100 million is being lost by BC Hydro every year due to electricity theft, most of it stolen by organized crime groups to power illegal pot grow-ops. That鈥檚 $100 million every year that gets added to your hydro bill and mine. As an honest BC Hydro customer I don鈥檛 like that one bit.
Why hasn鈥檛 BC Hydro moved faster to bring in the kind of smart technology and smart meters that can put an end to electricity theft? The archaic meter technology BC Hydro has on the ground hasn鈥檛 changed since my grandparents were kids and it can鈥檛 do anything other than crudely measure how much electricity has gone through it.
Can you imagine what it would be like if we were still using the same archaic appliances, phones, TVs and radios that were around in the 1940s and 1950s? What a joke that would be. So why are we still using the same electricity meters from that era that can鈥檛 do any of the smart things current meter technology can do like detecting electricity theft?
As far as I鈥檓 concerned, smart meters can鈥檛 get installed fast enough. Zeroing in on electricity theft in this province, the reputed grow-op capital of North America, should be a major priority and I can鈥檛 wait to see the offenders cut off from their $100 million a year free teat.
Mike Taylor
Port Moody
