A Clearer Signal
January 2024
15 years ago, when Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative installed its first advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) technology, it was used only to read the most remote meters on the cooperative’s system.
“At the time, we had 12-meter readers, and all we wanted to do was make them more efficient,” Director of Member Services John Robinson says. “We selected routes where they could only read 100 to 150 meters a day and automated them. Then our meter readers could focus on the routes where they could get 300 to 400 meters a day. So initially, we covered only about 30% of our system with the new meters.”
It didn’t take long for the cooperative to recognize the benefits of installing those advanced meters across the entire system. Not only did they end the need to read each meter in person, but they could capture electricity usage data that could be shared with consumer members via the co-op’s SmartHub app.
New & Improved
Today, SVEC is updating its meters again to bring even more efficiency to its operations and more useful information to consumer members. More than 3,500 meters have been upgraded so far, with the rest expected to be replaced in the next 18 months.
Manager of Power Technical Systems Trevor Touchton describes this upgrade as the third generation of AMI technology, behind the first generation of AMI meters which made reading meters more efficient, and the second generation which provided consumer members across the entire system some basic information to better understand their electricity usage and bills.
“The AMI technology we’ve been using isn’t obsolete,” he says. “It gets the job done. But we’re trying to keep up with the information needs of our members.”
As the tools and information members want at their disposal change, SVEC updates its technology to keep up. While the new meters will collect only total household electricity usage data as they always have, consumer members will be able to analyze it in more detail.
“The meters we’ve been using provide enough information for someone to track their hourly electricity usage,” Robinson says. “The new meters will allow members to drill down to 15-minute intervals to get an even better idea of what is driving their usage. For example, they might look and see that their usage peaks between 7:00 and 7:15 a.m. on weekdays when their water heater is working to keep their shower hot.”
The new generation of meters will also help the cooperative respond to outages faster, and sometimes even before they are reported. Currently, once a member reports an outage, SVEC staff must send an electronic signal down the line to find which meters do not have power and use that information to determine the general area where the fault is located.
“The new meters will automatically report when they lose power, so we’ll be able to dispatch our crews more quickly and accurately to the location of the problem,” Touchton says.
What to Watch For
To help update its meters, SVEC is working with Allegiant Utility Services. When your meter gets upgraded, this contractor’s workers will arrive at your house in a vehicle marked with the Allegiant logo and knock on your door to see if anyone is home. If no one is home and they need access to a locked gate to get to the meter, they will leave a door hanger asking you to schedule a visit for when you’ll be home. When they change out the meter, your home will be without power for only about 30 seconds.
You may see them taking photos of your meter before and after installing the new one. SVEC will review the photos to make sure your new meter was correctly installed, and the new meter’s number is recorded.
For the month when your meter is exchanged, you will notice usage reported for both the old and new meters on your bill. Adding them together will give your total usage for the month. After that, your bill will show only usage for the new meter.
