Beginning this month, Roanoke Electric Cooperative will install advanced digital meters to improve the quality of service provided to its member-owners. The project will involve a system-wide change of all existing residential and commercial meters to these new Landis + Gyr devices over the next 18 months.
The digital meters use advanced metering infrastructure, or AMI, technology that allows the co-op to detect problems more quickly and to locate outages more precisely. The co-op can use the information available from the new system, which will provide updates every 15 minutes, to make the process of delivering power more efficient. The efficiencies are expected to yield operational cost savings that will be passed on to member-owners.
“Improving the efficiency of both operations and the delivery of electricity not only helps keep down costs for member‑owners, it also helps the co-op to deliver on the promise to provide reliable and affordable electric power,” said Roanoke Electric Co-op Chief Operating Officer Marshall Cherry.
Member-owners will remain on the same rate the co-op established in November 2018 and will not incur any additional cost. Meter installations will take place outside the home where the current meters are located, so the process will have minimal impact on member-owners.