SaskPower officials visited Southend this year and inspected assets. (file photo/paNOW Staff)

By Derek Cornet

electrical costs

SaskPower blames customers for high bills in Southend

Sep 20, 2019 | 12:00 PM

SaskPower has completed an internal review of high electrical bills in Southend and determined they are related to customer power usage and activity.

That’s according to SaskPower spokesperson Joel Cherry, who stated the Crown corporation worked together with Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation (PBCN) leadership to help understand the billing challenges and roots causes for the high consumption rates. Officials with SaskPower visited the northern community, and inspected assets in the area as well.

“We were making sure our meters were working as designed, if the billing process is working properly and we just basically confirmed the root cause behind the high bills are related to customer power usage and activity,” he said.

Cherry also stated residents are likely experiencing high bills during the summer because of the way SaskPower estimates power usage. For instance, he said billing is based on the previous year’s usage during the same time period. That means when there is higher than expected usage on a later bill, customers have to catch up on those payments.

In order to help residents reduce their electrical bills in Southend and throughout northern Saskatchewan, Cherry noted SaskPower launched a pilot program to increase knowledge in the communities. He added that will include talking to students in schools and hosting community workshops. It’s important, Cherry stated, residents understand ways to keep their homes warm like ensuring doors and windows have proper insulation.

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“Everything North of La Ronge has to rely on electric heat or in some cases its supplemented by wood or other sources or heat, but they don’t have natural gas,” he said. “Ultimately as a province, the issues with catch up bills and unexpected high bills aren’t unique to the North. We have cases like that in all parts of Saskatchewan and what’s going to eventually help to get to the bottom of that is when we get smart meters on all of our customers.”

larongeNOW reached out to PBCN leadership for comment, but they were unavailable by deadline.

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derek.cornet@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @saskjourno