A spate of fires involving “smart” electricity meters overseas (and subsequent recalls of some smart meters) has increased interest in the potential of smart meters to cause fires in NZ.
There was a spate of smart meter associated fires in Christchurch in 2010, as you can see from this link: http://www.3news.co.nz/nznews/fireprone-meter-boxes-causing-concern-2010060317
I asked the NZ Fire Service for information about meter box fires in NZ and below you can see the information kindly supplied to me. However, it does not differentiate between the type of meter from which a fire originated as the NZ Fire Service does not keep this level of details in its statistics, as you can see from the comment by the officer who supplied the data. The statistics go until 2010, similar to other statistical data on the NZ Fire Service website.
(Click on the table to make it bigger.)
If you have suffered a fire originating from your meter, please consider letting me know the brand and model meter that you had, and whether your meter was mounted outside in a meter box or inside as part of your meter board. You can contact me through this link:
If the meter was destroyed beyond recognition in the fire and you did not previously know what sort of meter you had, your electricity retailer should be able to supply you with this information.
A good source of information about smart meter-associated fires is this link:
http://www.takebackyourpower.net/news/category/fires-damage/
UPDATE: Since this post has been written, www.stopsmartmeters.org.nz has been notified of a fire at a school in Northland as well as a house fire in NZ. Please see this link for details.
To stay up to date with the smart meter issue in NZ, please sign up to the free email list at www.stopsmartmeters.org.nz
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