In the next few weeks, residents and businesses in the City of Fairfield will have power interrupted briefly for the installation of new electric meters. The meters recently were received after being ordered in 2021. Our Dustin Fuller had an interview on the phone with Alyssa Parrott and Chris Hopfinger about why the meters are being changed out and what members will need to be aware of during the process.
Dustin – So first and foremost, the big thing is the electric meters are getting changed out for residents in the city of Fairfield that are on Wayne-White. Could you tell us why the meters are being changed out?
Alyssa –Well, basically, so they’re still technically considered, they’re on the city because the city still, you know, owns the system and everything, but what we’ve got right now, we have to go out the city meter readers still read those meters manually. What we’ve had in our system for quite some time now is these AMI meters that provide hourly data. They, you know, it connects into our system and so we can get their reading every hour, we can get it every day. It’ll pull in those readings so it’ll create more accuracy. Whereas, you know, there, there are times where, you know, everybody’s human and there may be an error on that. But whenever we get a reading in, but it’ll provide more accuracy and more data. And then I’ve got Chris in here with me. I don’t know if he wants to add anything to that on the wise as well. So I’ll let him speak to that too. Yeah, this, this is a project that the city was gonna undertake.
Chris – Even before we took over as part of our transition and they were looking at changing these meters out anyway, it’s just the timing. We couldn’t get the meters until now. It, it’s taking us over two years to get the meters actually in here to be able to do this meter change.
Dustin – I’m going to take a wild guess part of the reason it took two years was supply chain issues?
Chris – Correct.
Dustin –When you’re changing these meters out, how will the public be alerted to the idea of, oh, my meter is getting changed out this date and time?
Alyssa – So to do you know, different sections at a time. So we’re not gonna just go random places or anything like that. We’ll kind of have a section at a time and once that’s figured out that, hey, we’re gonna be here within the next week. As soon as we know we’re gonna send out automated phone calls to the phone numbers we have on file for the members or the customers in the city to let them know that hey, within the next week we’re gonna have a crew that’s gonna come to your home. Change the meter out should be out maybe 10 seconds. And then you know that way they’ll kind of have a heads up that will be coming. So we’re gonna send those out and we’ll try to post stuff online as well. Like through our Facebook page and just kind of keep everybody up to date, on when that’s gonna happen. But we’re, we’re, our goal is to try to do it within the week of when we plan to come out to that area.
Dustin – There are some people that potentially may have an issue with the electric being out, whether it’s here at the radio station, we always have to do our best to try to get information out about eas warnings, something like that, but someone at home maybe home medical equipment, something of that nature. If there’s what, what does someone that has that situation need to do?
Alyssa – If they’ve got that situation, where, you know, we can maybe schedule something with them for a certain time. So they’re aware just we’ve asked them to give us a call and we’ll do our best to work with them to accommodate their needs. So that way we can, you know, try to schedule a time that works best for them. So that way they kind of know ahead of time and can prepare and we can make sure that the, you know, goes as smoothly as possible for them as well.
Dustin – You mentioned something along the lines of with the new meters better accuracy. What are some of the other benefits to the new meters?
Chris – Well, with the new meters, we’re gonna have more data available. So instead of just having a one, you know, one reader a month, so they know what they use in the month, we’re gonna know what they do. We’ll, we’ll have the data and the, and they’ll be able to see their data as well, what they do hour by hour. So they’ll be able to closely, more closely monitor their usage and so they can adjust their lifestyle if they want you to, you know, produce their, reduce the bill.
Alyssa – And I have kind of part of my job is helping members figure out their, you know, higher usage and if they have a higher bill than normal that I usually get those phone calls. And one of the things that’s nice for looking at Wayne White meters, I can go in and see their hourly data. So, hey, your usage jumped at seven o’clock last night. Were you doing something or it started high? And it’s been going ever since. Whereas with the city, we currently can’t see that. So I kinda have a hard time sometimes helping the city customers when they have a high bill. I have a hard time helping them figure out. So we, we run through a gamut of questions. We’ve gone out to a few homes to help people before. But this will kind of help us to pinpoint maybe where some issues lie or what’s causing those issues. And, with their usage, maybe they’ve got a faulty water heater or their, their heating system stuck in emergency mode which causes their electric to go up or something like that. So, it, it will provide a lot more information for us in the member to be able to pinpoint issues if they run into those on their usage.
Below is the full phone call between our news director, Dustin Fuller and Alyssa Parrott and Chris Hopfinger of Wayne-White County Electric Cooperative: