EREC has a plan to start installing automated meters in the third quarter of 2013.
Automated Meters faqs
Yes, for a few minutes. You will need to reset electronic clocks and other devices.
With these new meters, EREC can read the meter remotely from our central office. Information from the meter is transmitted back to the co-op in daily increments. Transmitting this information electronically means that a meter reader no longer comes to your house in person.
The meter upgrade provides EREC members with numerous benefits. The new meters will help us
- Save money by eliminating the labor and transportation costs of in-person meter readings– a saving we pass on to our members.
- Improve billing accuracy, eliminating misreads or inaccurate readings.
- Pinpoint the exact location of outages more quickly, meaning a faster response time.
- Help our consumer-member troubleshoot high-bill problems by providing information about power consumption patterns, outage and blink count history, and voltage information, reducing usage questions.
- Improve electric service reliability and power quality – fewer outages blinks and surges.
- Help secure the overall safety of the cooperative employee team.
There will be no additional costs to the member to install the new system. There is no rate increase anticipated in association with this project. Following the installation, members will receive a bill with two readings: one for the old meter and one for the new meter.
No additional parts are anticipated or required. However, if something is identified as faulty or hazardous with a member’s equipment, the co-op will replace it.
EREC employees will install the meters.
No. New meters will be installed on all accounts. The cooperative is embarking on a system-wide program that will change 100 percent of existing residential and commercial meters in order to acquire more accurate information, without the need to enter a member’s property.
At this time, if members have a question about their energy usage, the cooperative must send operation personnel to the member/owner’s property to re-read the meter. With the new system, customer service representatives can access the meter information and obtain the reading almost instantaneously.
The new system will give the cooperative daily meter readings, instead of monthly readings. Other features of the new system will provide new data that will enable us to monitor the system better and correct inefficiencies.
The new meters are digital electronic devices while the old meters were electro-mechanical devices. The new meters will continue to display the meter reading, but it will be in a digital LED format. The biggest difference is that the new meters will have an electronic circuit board module installed. The module receives and stores the kilo-watt-hour (kWh) and demand consumption recorded by the electronics in the meter and is able to transmit securely this and other system data back to the cooperative’s computers.
Yes, members will continue to stay on the same rate class as they have in the past. There will be no increased cost to the member.