Turns out Smart Meters were a really dumb idea. Who knew? Well, beleaguered homeowners desperately trying to pay their skyrocketing hydro bills certainly had a pretty good idea.
Now the provincial auditor has confirmed with cold, hard facts about what hydro customers have been saying for the past seven years.
In her damning report Tuesday, auditor general Bonnie Lysyk painted a sorry picture of how your hydro bill ran so far out of control. The savings we were promised for Smart Meters didn’t materialize – and the Liberal governments of Dalton McGuinty and Kathleen Wynne have wreaked untold misery and hardship on households across the province.
Anyone who’s opened a hydro bill and groaned or wept at the staggering costs it’s added to their household costs can see how badly Smart Meters were bungled by the Liberals.
They massively over-estimated the net benefits – easy to do when you consider that, unlike other jurisdictions, they didn’t bother to do a cost-benefit analysis.
The Liberals projected Smart Meters would have a net benefit of $600 million over 15 years. Turns out, they were $512 million wrong. The actual savings were merely $88 million. Yet they told seniors on a fixed income to sit freezing in their homes during the day because they couldn’t afford to turn on a space heater. They can’t turn on the lights during the day because it costs too much.
It cost between $81 to $544 per meter to install.
Hydro One, the massive provincially owned distribution utility was singled out for its mismanagement of the program.
Hydro One installed only about 25% of the 4.8 million Smart Meters – but it accounted for $660 million – or almost half the $1.4 billion in total costs.
The Liberals have botched the entire electricity file. Their Green Energy Act has pushed energy prices out of sight. It’s not just homeowners who are hurting. The province’s once-powerful industrial heartland has been reduced to a rubble by this ragtag band of incompetents. Companies that once relied on an abundant source of cheap electricity have bailed and moved to the U.S. or Mexico.
MaRS, eHealth, Ornge, Smart Meters – everything they touch turns to crap.
For the rest of this article, click here: http://www.torontosun.com/2014/12/09/smart-meters-continue-to-be-stupid