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Tuesday July 23, 2013
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Multicultural celebration Dancers from the Hanyang Arts and Cultural Centre performed Moonlight Lotus Pond and were among myriad entertainers at the twoday Surrey Fusion Festival on the weekend. The free multicultural party took place Saturday and Sunday and attracted about 100,000 people to Holland Park, where visitors were treated to more than 30 cultural pavilions, food, song and dance, as well as a main stage with continuous entertainment, including headliner k-os. For more Fusion Festival photos, check www.surreyleader. com. JIM KINNEAR / CONTRIBUTOR
Keep your old power meter, for a fee Those who don’t want to use wireless smart meters will face separate charges by Tom Fletcher PEOPLE WHO INSIST on refusing new wireless electrical meters can keep their old mechanical meter as long as it lasts, if they pay a monthly fee, Energy Minister Bill Bennett announced last Thursday. Customers can keep their mechanical meters until they break down, their Measurement Canada accuracy seal expires or the customer relocates, the ministry said in a statement. The mechanical meter option is added to an earlier compromise with BC Hydro customers who still don’t have a digital smart meter, which transmits power consumption and status via radio signals. Customers can have a digital meter with its transmission function turned off, or keep their old meter, as long as they pay the cost of having the meter read manually. Bennett said the cost of meter reading will be about $20 a month. Customers who accept a
deactivated smart meter will also pay a fee of about $100 to have it adjusted. The fee to keep a mechanical meter will be higher, because it will require a separate system to manually record and bill for power consumption, Bennett said. BC Hydro reports that 60,000 smart meter installations have been delayed due to customer request, while 1.8 million or 96 per cent of customers now have a functioning smart meter. Some people believe the radio signals from smart meters are a health hazard, despite the fact that the periodic meter signals represent a tiny fraction of the radio frequency exposure from a working mobile phone. Bennett said mechanical meters are obsolete, and eventually every customer will have a smart meter, whether it transmits or not. “When somebody’s analog meter wears out, stops working or comes to the end of its useful life, there are no analog meters to reinstall,” Bennett said. “You can’t buy them anywhere.”
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