Dear editor,
We, the Comox Valley Electro Health Awareness Group, want to respond to the Letter to the Editor in the April 14 edition titled BC Hydro’s legacy fee nothing more than a service charge.
The “legacy” fees levied by BC Hydro are the second highest monthly fee of any power company in North America. Currently set at $32.40 per month, they are topped by Oregon. Recently, Quebec lowered their power company’s fee to $5 per month for the same service as we pay for.
Do you ever wonder about this fee being a monthly fee when we are all on a bimonthly reading and billing cycle? What service is BC Hydro providing on the months that they are not manually reading the meter?
How a smart meter works is that it is both a transmitter and a receiver, with a range of 2 KM. Your power use information is transmitted and a neighbour’s smart meter receives and transmits on this information. This ping pong process is repeated until your information finds a BC Hydro collection receiver.
Are you aware that many BC Hydro customers who have a smart meter installed are still read manually? Their situation is that the transmitter in their smart meter does not find another smart meter within range to be the receiver and relay the information on to a collection receiver. These people do not pay the “legacy” fee.
In a country where we aspire to fairness, we do not consider this fair treatment. All who are being manually read should pay or none should.
Have you ever wondered who is paying for the electrical consumption of all of this receiving/transmitting activity at a rate of 10,000 pulses per minute?
You can contact us for more information at cvelectrohealth@gmail.com.
Comox Valley Electro Health Awareness Group
Courtenay and surrounds