JOHNSON CITY — “Smart meters” are coming to local electricity customers, and the Johnson City Power Board hopes they’ll eventually help those customers make money-saving decisions about when and how they use their electricity.
The JCPB approved a plan Tuesday that would bring “Advanced Metering Infrastructure” to all customers by the end of 2011, at an estimated cost of $13.6 million. Instead of sending meter readers out in the field to collect usage data once a month, the JCPB can use the new system to measure each customer’s usage remotely.
Customers, too, will be able to make decisions about when they use power, and distributors like the JCPB are being pushed to tie electricity rates to time of use. In fact, General Manager Homer G’Fellers said, the Tennessee Valley Authority has pushed the schedule forward on when it wants distributors to be prepared for those kinds of changes.
“Starting in April 2010, we will be billed off of peak demand,” G’Fellers said. “And in 2012 they’ll be offering time of use rates and seasonal rates, so that has hastened our time frame as far as AMI.”
JCPB has about 74,000 customers, and all of them — residential, commercial and industrial — will get a new General Electric meter with the Eka Systems’ designed AMI software and hardware. The new system will also be compatible with JCPB’s coming move to fiber-optic transmission lines, which will start by connecting substations.
“This will provide a tremendous amount of things that will help us operationally, and it will put us in the position that we can transition better to the demand side of things, be able to know where our peaks are,” G’Fellers said.
The JCPB already has a bond that has made $28 million available to it, and some of those funds will be used to pay for the project.
Via: Johnson City Power Board making switch to ‘smart meters’
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