Maritime Electric installing data collectors on poles as part of transition to smart meters

If you have happened to look up lately, you may have seen something different on electrical poles.

Maritime Electric installing data collectors on poles as part of transition to smart meters Project will cost about $66.8M with the federal government covering $19M If you have happened to look up lately, you may have seen something different mounted on some electrical poles in Prince Edward Island. The rectangular white metal boxes are data collectors, and are part of Maritime Electric's plan to transition about 90,000 customers to smart meters, which can measure electrical usage in real time, showing how much energy a residence or building is using at a certain time of day.

Angus Orford, vice-president of corporate planning and energy supply with the public utility, called it part of Maritime Electric's "advanced metering infrastructure investment." "[A smart meter] just gives you a lot more definition on usage patterns and that will help the customer in the future be able to manage their energy consumption," Orford said. "It'll be able to identify when they're using electricity and how quickly they're using it and help with identifying if there is an offending appliance within their home — you know, like, maybe an old deep freeze that's using more electricity than otherwise a new one would."

About 1,300 of the data collectors are being mounted to poles across Prince Edward Island. That work is almost completed. Those will collect data from the 90,000 or so smart meters Maritime Electric is simultaneously installing across the Island.

"What it's essentially replacing is in our present system where we would have, you know, a meter reader drive by and be able to interrogate the meter as they drove by, but they were only getting that reading once a month," Orford said. Premier pushes back after Maritime Electric gets OK to raise electricity rates to recoup $37M in Fiona costs Solution to P.E.I.'s power problems could be batteries, not diesel, new report suggests "Now what we're getting is a continuous feed of information from the meters that reflects the customers' consumption behavior and ... provide more data back to the customer and assisting them in managing their consumption."

About 34,000 new smart meters, which send out a signal every 15 minutes, have already been installed since last fall. Orford said it's going to take longer to install the remaining 60,000 meters because they are mostly going in rural areas, which require more travel time. The old ones will be taken to a recycling plant in Halifax.

The new meters will also potentially allow Maritime Electric to charge different electricity rates such as during peak times, as opposed to the flat rate that is currently paid. "Upon completion of the project, there will be a period of time that's required to start to analyze customer behaviour because it's a process that then what you look at is, is there an opportunity to incent customers through time of use rates, influence behaviour so that it ends up being an economic savings for the customer?" he said.

"There'll be a notice being sent to them that their meter will be changed out and they usually have advanced notice ... that the conversion to the new advanced metering infrastructure is going to be taking place." The project will cost about $66.8 million with the federal government covering $19 million. Orford said work is expected to finish summer next year.

With files from Connor Lamont