Fort Nelson observed Earth Hour Saturday

VANCOUVER – British Columbians saved 136 megawatt hours of electricity and reduced the provincial electricity load by 1.95 per cent during Earth Hour Saturday night – the equivalent of turning off more than 10 million 12.5-watt LED light bulbs.
Many communities across the province successfully improved their Earth Hour energy savings from the previous year. Comox and Courtenay saw the highest reduction at nearly 10 per cent.
Earth Hour is an annual global event hosted by the World Wildlife Fund and supported by B.C. Hydro. This year marks the sixth year of B.C. Hydro’s support of the event. The goal of Earth Hour is to encourage individuals to turn off unnecessary lights and electronics in an effort to conserve power and in doing so, demonstrate support for climate change reduction efforts.
Fort Nelson News contacted Kevin Aquino, Media Relations and Issues Management at B.C. Hydro to see how much power Fort Nelson saved. He emailed  the following: “Unfortunately, we don’t have data for most northern communities this year for a few reasons. We currently rely on telemetry data from substations to calculate Earth Hour results. The equipment we use isn’t meant to be used for measuring this sort of information. This year, we were not able to get readings from many substations in the north. In addition, some of the data we got back was not reliable and was considered flawed so it wasn’t used. Also, many substations in the north share feeders. As such, we were unable to separate out consumption for specific communities.”
“What would be more useful for our customers is for them to look up their own electricity use by logging on to their online account at bchydro.com/myhydro. Currently, 1.1 million of our customers have access to their usage information online that can be broken down by the hour. Customers can log on to check to see if they have access to this data and compare their Earth Hour usage to their electricity use the previous Saturday.  This will give them a better idea of whether or not their actions made a difference in reducing their consumption.” Kevin Aquino Media Relations & Issues Management
The province-wide energy savings reported since B.C. Hydro began supporting Earth Hour are as follows: 121 megawatt hours in 2012; 117 megawatt hours in 2011; 64.6 megawatt hours in 2010; 72.67 megawatt hours in 2009; and 125 megawatt hours in 2008.
About 1.1 million B.C. Hydro customers now have access to this energy use information. As the remaining smart meters and components of the smart grid are deployed across B.C., more customers will be able to track their own Earth Hour results in the future. B.C. Hydro provides tools, resources and incentives to help people conserve year-round.

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