FortisBC Inc. (FortisBC) Application for a Certificate of Public ...

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Response:
FortisBC Inc. (FortisBC or the Company)
Application for a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity
for the Advanced Metering Infrastructure Project
Response to British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC or the Commission)
32.2.3 If not, why not?
Information Request (IR) No. 1
Please see the response to BCUC IR1 Q32.2.2.
Response:
Submission Date:
October 5, 2012
Page 57
32.2.4 What barriers or show-stoppers would exist to prevent the deployment of
digital AMI meters along with digital PLC and/or digital AMR meters?
FortisBC has not identified any technical or operational barriers or showstoppers that would
preclude an installation using either PLC or AMR technology, and will continue to look at
alternative LAN options such as these. However the cost of satellite backhaul bandwidth that
would be avoided is not sufficiently high to make either option more economical than the
proposed RF mesh system in locations with sufficient population. As discussed in section 4.1.3
of the Application, FortisBC is continuing to evaluate WAN options as technology changes, and
both options have been and will continue to be considered in these areas.
33.0 Reference: Project Description
Exhibit B-1, Tab 4.0, Section 4.1.3
Exhibit B-1, Appendix C-4, BC Hydro SMI Business Case
Continued Manual Meter Reads
“It is also anticipated that a small number of AMI meters (less than 1 percent) will not
have an economic WAN option available (based on the technologies described above)
at the time of AMI deployment. FortisBC plans to manually download data from the
meters at billing period intervals. The Company expects to obtain the same information
made available through the WAN technologies discussed above, but at less frequent
intervals. The costs of the manual meter download have been included in the overall
Project cost. FortisBC will continue to evaluate the economics of WAN options with the
intent of eventually providing WAN connections for all meters.” [Ref: B-1, p. 49]
BC Hydro estimated the average cost to read the five per cent of customers that would
continue to be manual reads would be three times higher than pre-Smart Meter costs.
[Ref: B-1, Appendix C-4, p. 27 of 44]