Nova Scotia’s energy future holds exciting possibilities – more wind and solar generation, world-leading tidal energy, battery storage, electric vehicles, and even more opportunities for customer choice and control.
Globally, the electrical grids that have served us over the past century are evolving through new technology into “smart grids.” Smart grids offer a future in which individual pieces of the electrical system – including “smart devices” in customers’ homes and businesses – can communicate with one another, so that the entire electrical system works together to use energy more efficiently. This means lower overall costs for customers and a cleaner environment.
The first step to modernizing Nova Scotia’s electricity grid is upgrading customers' current electrical meters to smart meters – work that will begin in the fall of 2019 and continue through to early 2021.
When smart meter technology is turned on in 2021, customers will begin enjoying the following benefits:
Smart meters are the new standard in electrical meters. Approximately 70% of Canadian homes already have smart meters.
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Starting in early 2021, smart meters will deliver enhanced services and will put you in control of your energy use.
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We will start upgrading 500,000 meters throughout Nova Scotia in the fall of 2019, and plan to be finished by early 2021.
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Smart meters will put you in control of your energy usage and help us respond quicker in the event of an outage.
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Smart meter technology will help Nova Scotia Power deliver better, more efficient service to you and empower you with knowledge about your energy usage. You will be contacted in advance of your smart meter upgrade, but in most cases, nothing is required on your end.
Today, your meter is read manually approximately every 60 days to produce a bill with basic information about energy usage. Smart meters will provide a safe, secure, and two-way connection between the meter and Nova Scotia Power, helping us provide a more reliable service to our customers, and helping you understand your own energy usage better.
Beginning in late 2019, we will be upgrading meters and building our smart network in preparation for smart meter technology to be turned on in 2021.
If you decide not to upgrade to a smart meter (opt out), you will be selecting a non-standard meter service and will be charged a fee based on cost recovery for manual meter reading. This ensures these costs are not passed on to all our customers.
Tribus Services was selected as the smart meter installation vendor for our meter upgrade based on a competitive procurement process, which highlighted the company’s extensive experience with smart meter installations across North America, including installing over 2 million smart meters in Canada.
Your meter technician will arrive in a co-branded vehicle and will be wearing co-branded safety gear with Nova Scotia Power and Tribus Services logos. Additionally, your technician will have an identification badge with the Nova Scotia Power logo and ‘Authorized Contractor’ included on it.
Nova Scotia Power is building a secure and private communication network (we will not be using your WiFi). When meters have been upgraded and the communication network is up and running, meters will use wireless communication to securely transmit your energy usage information from your meter to a collector located nearby. These collectors will then use the cellular network to relay energy usage information (or data) back to our main data centre.
Smart meters will collect and send information related to electricity usage and power quality in a secure, encrypted format. They will not communicate information to Nova Scotia Power such as:
NS Power takes the privacy of our customers’ information very seriously. We do not sell our customers’ personal information and only share it with third parties in limited circumstances, as described in our Customer Privacy Policy.
Nova Scotia Power takes the privacy of our customers’ personal information very seriously and protects and discloses customer personal information in accordance with the requirements set out in the Federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Document Act. For more information on how we collect, use, and disclose personal information, see our Customer Privacy Policy.
The data transmitted from the meter to the collector will be encrypted; this means that it is locked with a unique key and only accessible with the matching key owned by Nova Scotia Power. The collector then sends the encrypted data to our system where it will be unlocked and used to generate bills. In 2021, the data will also be available to you through your online account where you can view your energy usage in intervals as frequent as 15 minutes. You can access updates on your energy usage consumption daily.
No. In the future, smart meters may enable us to provide our customers with more rate options, such as time-of-day, to best suit their lifestyle and energy use.
Our first focus is on the successful deployment of smart meters and we’ll be talking to customers about future opportunities such as different rate options and technology applications in 2020.
No, the smart meter upgrade will not impact current power rates. You will get the benefits of smart meter technology without paying more through electricity rates because smart meters will make our business more efficient, paying for the investment over time.
Safety is always our first priority. Smart meters are currently used in 70% of Canadian homes and as a late adopter, we’ve had the opportunity to carefully review the technology. We are confident the meters used for our Smart Meter Upgrade are safe, accurate, and secure. All meters we use meet or exceed industry regulations and standards, which are in place to help ensure the health and safety of our employees and our customers. Our smart meters will adhere to a long list of standards established by third-party organizations such as:
If you have any questions about your smart meter upgrade and what is means for you, please get in touch with us.
You can reach our Customer Care Centre from Monday to Friday 8:00 a.m. - 8:00p.m. or email us at smartmeterinfo@nspower.ca
1-800-428-6230 or 902-428-6230
902-428-6108 (Fax)
1-800-565-6051 (TTY/Hearing impaired)
