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Canada News

Calgarians Detail Life With an Electricity Load Limiter (www.cbc.ca) 307

Posted by msmash from the new-lows dept.
Limiters cap amount of electricity households can use, making many appliances unusable. From a report: Josie Gagne was stumbling in the dark, sobbing while on the phone with an Enmax customer assistant, as she tried to locate the tiny orange button under the utility meter that would restore heat inside. It was the shock that got her. The young single mother with two kids under two returned home one winter day last year to find a note on her door from Enmax. She'd fallen behind on bills; the home was now on a limiter, capping her electricity. The furnace was off and at that point, she had no idea what a limiter even was. "I'm freaking out. I'm crying, thinking 'What am I going to do?'" she said. "It's the middle of winter, it's still cold outside. How am I going to feed my children when my oven doesn't work?"

Rising utility bills have community advocates worried the number of Calgarians facing this scenario will increase, and many don't know what a load limiter is. It's often the first step before disconnection. Several Calgary residents flagged the issue while sharing their utility bill experiences with CBC Calgary through text messaging, and on Calgary Kindness, a mutual aid Facebook group. They've shared their personal stories with CBC journalists so others know what to expect. Contributors said they were scared their fridge would lose power and their groceries would rot. They relied on air fryers, barbecues or a hot plate to make it through. The extra fees -- $52 for the notice, $52 to remove the limiter -- only made it worse. Plus, the black mark on their files means they often can't get a contract with more favourable fixed rates. When the device is installed, a stove or anything else requiring 240 volts of electricity won't work.
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Calgarians Detail Life With an Electricity Load Limiter More

Calgarians Detail Life With an Electricity Load Limiter

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  • What we allow is what will continue. I guess we need to see people dying in the cold, hungry and destitute for us to change, or at least - charge tickets for it. The question I have is - have we had enough yet?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by nonBORG ( 5254161 )
      We are living in the first world and people want to have free power also? Did you see the part where she did not pay for the electricity and they did not even cut her off but limited the load? She had to push a button outside? wow the inconvenience.

      Please go ahead and pay her bill if you want to. That is why this is happening because you are not paying her bills for her! Why did you do this? How Evil!

      • Did you see the part where she did not pay for the electricity and they did not even cut her off but limited the load?

        According to TFA:

        Alberta regulations say electricity cannot be completely disconnected between Oct. 15 and April 15.

        So installing a limiter was the utility's only option. I'm sure w/o the regulation, they would have cut her off completely. Just noting, not excusing not paying the bill(s).

        • "The furnace was off "

          Yeah, the limiter might as well shut it all off if pipes freeze.

          • "The furnace was off "

            Yeah, the limiter might as well shut it all off if pipes freeze.

            Apparently (from TFA), the limiter prevents anything requiring 240v from running, which would obviously included most forms of central electric heat (including heat pumps). This seems like an inelegant sledgehammer application, especially in the Winter months where, as you noted, pipes could freeze, but allowing one/specific device(s) would require special wiring, etc... which would also seem to be overkill for this circumstance -- specific wiring for limiter use.

            • That's a very clever limiter, how would it work - sense that the neutral was not carrying enough current and cut one hot wire ? presumably whenever the stove is turned on all juice to the house is cut, or perhaps just one phase is cut and half the lights go out. weird.

            • That does not make any sense.
              If the house is wired for 240V, obviously _everything_ in the house is running with 240V.

              I never heard about a house that 110V + 220V/240V wiring. What is emerging is 12V or 36V direct current wiring. As an additional wiring to the "standard" one.

              BTW: electric (cooking) ovens usually have 3 phases and end up at 380V.

              • I never heard about a house that 110V + 220V/240V wiring.

                Welcome to North America dude. The houses are all wired for 240V split into 2x 120V legs for residential service.

            • which would obviously included most forms of central electric heat (including heat pumps).

              The winters here are so cold that air-source heat pumps are useless and ground-source heat pumps are expensive enough that if you can afford one then paying your electrical bill is not really going to be an issue.

        • Because I'm sure people in this situation have tons of cash to pay for avacado toast and fancy smartphones that they could pay their utility bill with instead. /s

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rhipf ( 525263 )

        Ya what do people expect. You don't need electricity in this day and age so why should I worry if you can't afford to pay your electrical bill?
        Of course you have no information as to why she wasn't able to pay her electrical bill do you. Heaven forbid you have sympathy for someone that may be less well off than you are.

        P.S. Yes we are living in the first world yet there still isn't enough wealth to go around since some of us seem to need billions of dollars just to get by. How do you expect those billionair

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Radyair ( 824166 )
      In fact up until 2 years ago that is exactly what they did. Turn it OFF. The rate limiter is a GOOD thing, people.

  • This is what happens when you don't "voluntarily" contribute your labor under capitalism. Or sometimes even if you do, but the market has decided that your labor isn't so valuable that you shouldn't be at risk of freezing to death. But maybe she'll get lucky some day and find a weird potato chip that will sell for a million dollars to someone who invented an unimaginably inefficient and dangerous cryptocurrency, such is the elegant, dignified meritocracy of free-market capitalism!

    • Typical (Score:2, Insightful)

      by tiqui ( 1024021 )

      just like every Marxist/anti-capitalist I have ever met, you compare supposed capitalism (Canada is FAR from a free market economy, having things like socialized health care, government speech regulations, etc) to... nothing. You compare it to nothing but let the reader imaging some utopia of some non-capitalism you do not present.

      The simple fact is that what we loosely call capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system known to man, while oppressing people less than nearly any syst

      • Imaginary Socialists need to fantasize that things they want are naturally free, and any existing system that provides it to them must be an artificial barrier, erected to profit off something that is freely occurring and plentiful, likely with malice and greed as motivators. They often ignore all arguments that point out that even basic things (like electricity and potable water, which most agree humans should have free access to, ideally) are only possible by compensating a great many people for their tim

      • Canada is FAR from a free market economy, having things like socialized health care, government speech regulations, etc)

        Ah, the old Canadian Schrodinger's Capitalism, Canada can be capitalist or socialist as the conservative desires for their argument of the moment...right now it's socialist it seems. Not bad for a place that offers "socialized" medicine while delivering at least US standards of living to workers, huh?

        there's Hitler's "National Socialism" and murdered millions,

        Here you show that you got your history education from right-wing nutjob blogs by suggesting that the Nazis were communist or socialist in some way, while those were actually their political arch-rivals who the

      • The simple fact is that what we loosely call capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty than any other system known to man, while oppressing people less than nearly any system known to man.
        If you believe that, you do not know anything about history.

        Marxist systems always tend toward institutional brutality, demanding that each person work to their ability but not rewarding them proportionally
        As Marxist systems rarely existed on this planet, the question is: how wrong are you? Marx proposed that as an

    • If you're going to write a comment that's just dripping with contempt for those who are successful, then you should at least make sure you got the facts straight:

      It's illegal for utility companies to disconnect people's power in the cold months in Canada, and thus her power wasn't disconnected. For those who would normally be disconnected due to not paying for the energy they're using, they have a limiter installed on their power meters that, if the draw is overused for the essentials, is tripped. They then

      • It's illegal for utility companies to disconnect people's power in the cold months in Canada, and thus her power wasn't disconnected. For those who would normally be disconnected due to not paying for the energy they're using, they have a limiter installed on their power meters that, if the draw is overused for the essentials, is tripped. They then have to reset it and not use non-essential appliances.

        So the only reason she had any chance at restoring heat at all was due to government intervention in the market, good point.

        If the one in five billion people who manage to make a million dollars by selling a potato chip is too much for you to bear in this strange world, then I suggest you disconnect yourself from the news entirely. These oddities are frequent, continual, and speak to human behavior more than "free-market capitalism" (under which they didn't occur).

        What kind of system allows these "oddities" to happen then? They're not all that odd when we have 8 people owning as much wealth as the poorer 50% of the planet (around 3.5~4 billion people), or a first-world 10% swimming in excess wealth while the people actually doing the work are living in grinding poverty.

        • >So the only reason she had any chance at restoring heat at all was due to government intervention in the market, good point.

          You say this as if it's a barb or even a point I'd take issue with

          >What kind of system allows these "oddities" to happen then?

          My point is that it's an inevitable abberation when you have billions of people living and interacting and finding things to busy themselves with, and not something that's worth getting upset about, and to not be spiteful towards the person who was able t

  • Time for people to invest in improved insulation! Seriously, if you want to decrease your energy usage then that is the most effective upgrade you can make.

    To avoid more incidents like this, they should send out info packets to people who use abnormally high amounts of energy.

    • TFA talks about people who are tenants. Not home owners. If it is the tenant who pays the bills the owner doesn't have a big incentive to insulate. It just raises the value of the housing. I don't know much about Canada but my logic suggest their housing is well insulated.

      • Nope. Probably not particularly well insulated. Tenants pay the bills & the landlords don' care. Apartment building leak heat like sieves. They often have condensation/mold problems from where warm, moist internal air meets cold window frames & walls. Canadians have relatively cheap electricity but burn through it like there's no tomorrow & mostly think nothing of it. Northern Europeans find this attitude shocking.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      they should send out info packets

      How much heat can poor people get by burning these packets?

  • Ok, i am ignorant here. Canadians please enlighten me.

    Isn't heating often electric in Canada ? How is the heating supposed to work with a limiter ? Aren't people at risk of freezing to death in the Canadian winter, I know heat pumps use less energy but i still do not get it.

    • Ok, i am ignorant here. Canadians please enlighten me.

      Isn't heating often electric in Canada ? How is the heating supposed to work with a limiter ? Aren't people at risk of freezing to death in the Canadian winter, I know heat pumps use less energy but i still do not get it.

      Unless you live somewhere with mild winters (ie the coasts), heating with electric is horribly expensive. Most people heat with natural gas. The article refers to her furnace, so I'm assuming that is the case here as well. Still needs electricity for the blower motor though, so if other things in the house tripped the breaker on the limiter then everything, including that furnace fan, goes out.

      • I agree about the furnace comment, but heating with electric is far from horribly expensive. Quite the opposite, in the long run its quite often cheaper than gas, especially if its the only gas utility you have in your home. The problem is the upfront cost is crippling, especially if your house is not well insulated.

        • Here in MB almost all our power is hydroelectric and it is among the cheapest in North America, but still almost nobody uses electric heat. Nights in the dead of winter can get routinely be below -35C. Natural gas is probably less than half the monthly cost in a typical installation.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by PPH ( 736903 )

          I don't know about Canada, but here in Seattle, the equivalent energy cost of electric heat is about 4 times that of gas. If you use an efficient heat pump, the coefficient of performance can bring that back to even. But resistive heat is very expensive. It is also what is primarily installed in low income residences. So, screw the poor.

        • That is nonsense.

          With -30C outside you have a hard time running a heat pump (yes, you can bury pipes underground, but 50 - 100 years ago: no one did that). So you would be stuck with resistive heating, converting electricity directly into heat: that is a crime.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by c-A-d ( 77980 )

        Natural Gas heat is usually in the formed of Forced Air heating. That requires an electric-powered blower to actually move the heat from the furnace to the rest of the house. This is likely what she has.

    • I have a heat pump and it runs on 240 V. It also uses a 25 amp breaker, so it's not a small load.

      The limiter must be disconnecting one of the hot leads. So even if you had a gas furnace it would not run if the controls and blower were on the side that was disconnected. The only gas furnace I ever had did run on 120 V, others may be different.

      If you knew what you were doing you could swap the furnace control breaker to the still live hot wire in 10 minutes. The average female probably would not know how. I'm

  • A limiter might not be such a great approach for a house in Canada where electricity is the primary source of heat! In a Southern clime, it'd probably be OK, however. We really can't expect businesses to just ignore non-payment, so in theory rate-limiting is not a bad "first step". But maybe the company could just put a moratorium on cutting any utility in a winter month. I believe some states in the US have that as a policy.

  • ... about civilisation?

  • "When the device is installed, a stove or anything else requiring 240 volts of electricity won't work"
    Sounds like a challenge to me.

    • "When the device is installed, a stove or anything else requiring 240 volts of electricity won't work" Sounds like a challenge to me.

      Illegal grow ops (the old fashioned huge ones, not the small legal ones) often bypass the meter. They still get caught eventually, because the utility does indeed notice the missing power and track it down in time. If you are not a big user you might be able to get away with this for longer. At a risk to your safety, your criminal record, and your fire insurance coverage, assuming you can afford that as well.

      • I'm more wondering how a device installed outside the home at the meter can selectively cut off 240 appliances. It looks like they use 120/240 split phase so they can't just disable one of the legs or half the panel wouldn't work assuming things are properly balanced. Or maybe they do exactly that and you're just shit outta luck if anything you need is on the disabled leg.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by PPH ( 736903 )

          I'm more wondering how a device installed outside the home at the meter can selectively cut off 240 appliances.

          It's quite easy. They take the two hot feeds to the panel and connect them both to a single leg coming in from the street. All single phase loads will be fed from that one leg and work just fine. But all the loads which need L1 and L2 to get 240V will see L1 and L1. Zero volts.

    • I wouldn't be surprised if they bill you for installation costs.

  • A home should NEVER be limited to one heat source where winter can kill you. No grid is sufficiently reliable nor will it ever be. Do the needful to fix that problem before disaster strikes. You have a life and your first priority should be having your shit together. If you live where it gets cold, have a backup portable or permanent backup heating method that works for your situation. Have sufficient clothing for everyone that they can be comfortable with NO heat. It need not be nice or expensive as begga

    • If you're poor yet insist on having kids that proves you are more vain than responsible. It's not society's job to feed your mistakes.

      I appreciate your liberal take on caring for the poor, but the joke's really on the rich who reproduce below the replacement rate. The poor will win in the end.

    • But where would all the wage slaves come from? The poor carry the world, dude. An army of invisible poor create the goods, deliver them and stock the aisles at your store. The poor remove your waste and pick over it for anything of worth. The poor sweep your street, make your clothes and tend to your table. The only dirty job you do is wipe your arse.

  • Where is dad? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by tiqui ( 1024021 )

    For most of human history, males and females paired up not only to reproduce but to divide the workload and help each other (and the kids) survive. Through much of the 20th century, Western civilization provided an economic system successful enough that one of the pair (usually the man) could work outside the home to earn the resources to buy what was needed, and the other (usually the woman) worked inside the home, using the obtained resources to take care of the family. This was never perfect, and sometim

  • BHPH lots equip the cars they sell with a GPS tracker and a kill switch for the unpaid accounts. Clearly someone figured out a way to apply this to Utilities. Just like England, where the gas meter had a coin box.

    • The last flat I had in England had an electronic 'key' in the electric meter, you had to take it down to a power company office and put credit on it - all the power was paid in advance, if you ran out then you ran out.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hoofie ( 201045 )

        With Electronic metering there is no key. You pay at a local store to add money to the meter and it's controlled from the utility via a radio mesh network. Once the money runs out the meter disconnects [can only do it during the day] but there is an "emergency" button that gives you $20 of credit that can only be used once and needs to be paid back next time you top up in the store.

        You can see online how much credit you have and what your usage is.

        I worked on a pilot scheme here in Australia that was fully

  • I always have to raise an eyebrow at these stories. I am pretty sure that she must not have paid the bill for a while or even made small payments. I don't know her financial situation and child support she receives, but it would have been smart to at least prioritize the important bills and then pay the bare minimum to avoid this. In the end, I'm sure this is really just another bad choice she made in a long list of bad life choices that got her to that point though.
    • For me, the statement that she could not feed her family without the oven. Really?

    • The further behind she is, the better. This is Canada, after all. The welfare system auto-accepts single moms, and they massively prioritize overdue bills such as this for obvious reasons. She can even apply online now, and they pay directly to the utility company asap. As a Canadian I'm appalled she didn't even bother to educate herself enough about the bills she owes to know what a load limiter does. I can't muster a single shit to give about her situation.

  • Its usual for utilities to disconnect customers who don't pay their bills for a sufficiently long time. A "limiter" is not in any way I can think of worse than a disconnect.

    The real issue is what to do when someone is unable or unwilling to pay their bill (it may not be easy to determine which. Ideally there would be a way to provide electricity for necessities like heat, but the electric distribution technology is not presently set up for that.

    Its not easy to think of a solution to this. We don't k
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The suffering is overrated, and all it's doing is advertising the mother's absolute ignorance and such a lack of interest in her bills she didn't educate herself on what a load limiter was. Since this is in Canada, she's guaranteed to be accepted as a welfare recipient, and they prioritize overdue utility bills, especially if children are involved. This is a developed country with an advanced welfare system, she's never going to go without unless it's because of her own lack of interest in understanding t

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