HOW YOUR SMART METER WORKS

A smart meter electronically tracks how much electricity is used and when it is used, paving the way for time-of-use pricing.

Electricity Consumption in the Digital Age

As digital technologies are increasingly used in electrical equipment and appliances around the house, the time has come to use these same technologies to manage overall electricity consumption.

Smart meters track the energy use in your home on an hourly basis and send this information automatically to your local distribution company (LDC). By automating the meter-reading function, smart meters deliver a number of benefits:

• They support the implementation of time-of-use prices. By time-stamping your consumption data, local distribution companies will be able to determine how much electricity was used during off-peak times and how much was consumed during on-peak periods. This capability allows homeowners to find electricity savings by shifting their electricity use.
• They help LDCs to identify power theft and respond to meter failures and outages more quickly.
• They provide greater operational efficiencies in local distribution system management.

Ontario's Smart Meter Infrastructure

Much like your telephone or internet connection, the smart meter connects you into a wide computer network.

From your home, the smart meter puts into play a series of actions: collecting energy use information, verifying its accuracy and processing it for monitoring and billing. In its role as Smart Metering Entity, Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) is responsible for the central data repository (known as the MDM/R) that manages the consumption data for residential smart meters.

The MDM/R ensures that all Ontario’s 4.7 million residential and small business consumers have access to the same high standards for effective and accurate smart meter billing information regardless of where they live. It is a critical component of the Smart Metering Initiative, enabling TOU rate billing and encouraging consumers to shift more of their energy use to off-peak periods.

The MDM/R provides a cost-effective solution and service for the processing, storage and protection of electricity consumption information. The system has been up and running since March 2008 and is operating reliably and under budget.

Smart Metering Charge

The IESO, as the Smart Metering Entity (SME), has applied to the Ontario Energy Board, for a charge to be applied to consumer bills to cover the cost of building and operating the data repository. More information about the proposed smart metering charge is available on the SME website.