Fried Appliances

Was smart meter to blame for fried fridge? - BC Local News

A Burnaby couple returned from a few days away recently to find their refrigerator and microwave not working.

They also found a smart meter newly installed on their house.

Irene Haraga, 66, said they believe the two incidents may be connected and that a power surge may have taken place.

She and her husband left on Sunday, Nov. 6 and arrived home Tuesday, Nov. 8 to find their fridge warm and most of the contents of their freezer defrosted and spoiled.

"We are discovering some problems with customer wiring as we go through the process of exchanging meters around the province," [Cindy Verschoor, BC Hydro's communications manager for the smart meter program] said. "In a very small number of cases we do find that the customer actually does need to do some repairs to their wiring, that they may have an issue they didn't know about otherwise."

"Today we're basically plugging in 21st century technology into a 20th century grid and it's just time to upgrade it."