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What kind of technology do advanced power meters use?

The technology installed throughout Edmonton has been used in North America for more than 15 years and meets all of the standards currently set out by Health Canada and the World Health Organization for Radio Frequency.

Meter activity

Both residential and commercial advanced meters are active for about 1.5 minutes per day. The advanced metering system communicates to EPCOR using Radio Frequency (RF) emissions over the 900 MHz Industrial and Scientific Measurement (ISM) band. This technology is similar to that used by baby monitors, wireless internet networks, cordless phones and garage door openers.

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​Advanced Water Meter Infrastructure

Looking for information on the advanced metering infrastructure for water meters?
Visit the water AMI project page​

Radio frequency exposure

According to Health Canada, the RF energy used by the meter is typically transmitted at much greater distance from the body than common RF household devices (cell phones, wi-fi, baby monitor, etc.), resulting in very low RF exposure levels — similar to AM or FM radio broadcast signal exposure.​

Just like the advanced meters, the collection devices use lower power, infrequent, short signals. The collection devices, which collect and transmit advanced meter data to EPCOR, are mounted on utility poles and are active less than three minutes each day. They also use extremely low power — about one watt. 

More information

More information on Radio Frequency (RF) energy is available from Health Canada.

Health Canada​ sets the RF Exposure Guidelines called "Limits of Human Exposure to Radiofrequency Electromagnetic Energy in the Frequency Range from 3kHz to 300GHz," commonly known as Safety Code 6.​