Over the next year, Pee Dee Electric will be installing new, advanced digital meters to improve the quality of service provided to its members. The cooperative is embarking on a system-wide project to change 100 percent of existing residential and commercial meters to advanced digital meters. The data received from the new Landis + Gyr meters will be critical to the operations of the cooperative and will provide numerous benefits to the cooperative, such as greater accuracy in billing, faster outage restoration and operational savings.
Members will have access to hourly usage data that will help them effectively manage their electric usage. Armed with this information, the cooperative’s member service representatives will be in a better position to help address billing inquiries from members and advise them on ways to reduce their electricity costs by using electricity more efficiently.
Data from the advanced metering system will be used to improve operational efficiencies at the cooperative. Instead of relying on members to notify the co-op of an outage, a signal from the meters will notify the cooperative, providing more complete information on the location and extent of the outage. In addition, the meters will provide other important operational data such as blink counts, voltage readings, reverse rotation and transformer loading. The co-op will also be integrating its Customer Owned Generation (COG) program into the system, which will provide real-time data for days when it calls upon that equipment to operate.
“Improving the efficiency of both operations and the delivery of electricity not only helps keep down costs for members, but it also helps the cooperative to deliver on the promise to provide reliable and affordable electric power to members,” Pee Dee Electric CEO Donnie Spivey said.
Members’ kilowatt-hour electric rates will not change because of these upgrades, and there are no additional costs incurred by the members as a result of the program.