Editor:
On Sunday evening during a wind storm, my neighbourhood lost power (a fairly common occurrence on the Sunshine Coast). After an hour, I decided to contact BC Hydro to see when they estimated restoration of power. After waiting on hold for 30 minutes, I was told that BC Hydro was not aware of any outages in my neighbourhood.
When the smart meters were being rolled out, one of the big advantages that BC Hydro advertised was that it would no longer be necessary for individual homeowners to contact them during outages, that information would be immediately relayed to BC Hydro via the smart meter. When I asked the telephone rep why they didn't already know that there was a problem in the grid, I was shocked to hear his reply that the automatic reporting function of power outages is not in place, nor was he aware of when this function would be enabled.
Most homeowners are unaware that we must still contact BC Hydro for every power outage. Please continue to phone 1-888-POWERON whenever power is lost.
Michele Libling, Gibsons
