Coos-Curry Electric Cooperative selected approximately 200 members living in the Gold Beach area to participate in a project designed to test the effectiveness of a new, automated meter reading technology (AMR) in 2005. The results far outweighed the expectations and the cooperative immediately set out to install the AMR technology throughout the service territory. The AMR technology at the electric cooperative is being implemented in stages beginning in the northern areas and continuing south.
As part of the deployment, all the substations have been upgraded to accommodate the new technology and its communication needs. The combination of substation equipment and meters placed in the field will provide a communications infrastructure that transmits data and gives CCEC the ability to read meters and monitor outages and voltage levels more effectively from remote locations. With AMR comes the ability to reduce fuel and other costs associated with monthly meter reading activities and allow CCEC to better utilize its labor resources. To date, over 13,000 AMR meters have been installed, upgrades to the substations serving those meters completed and many repeaters in place to boost signals in remote areas.
One of the more significant areas of potential savings to the membership is in the reduction of metering losses. These losses occur when meters are not calibrated correctly and when the cooperative does not have a system in place for testing and replacing aging meters. For members, it means more accurate billings because the new meters will record actual consumption and will be based on exact readings instead of estimates – every month. Members with the updated meters will have daily consumption records that will help them manage their own energy loads and conserve energy.
CCEC elected to conduct a pilot project and then systemmatically install the new technology throughout the service territory in stages in order to gain experience with the new equipment and technology and, more importantly, to use the results of the pilot program to test the assumptions the cooperative made with regard to the costs and benefits projected for the entire program. Those assumptions were based on a Financial Planning Analysis, an AMR Payback Evaluation Tool provided by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. The costs for a system-wide installation are expected to be $ 5.3 million with a payback in 5 ½ years and an overall 10-year savings of approximately $11 million. Information about the equipment, including the electrical meters being used in this project may be found on the Cannon Technologies, Inc. website.
The cooperative also elected to use existing manpower to install the new meters, upgrade the communications equipment in the substation and test the AMR technology during the pilot program. Training for the employees assigned to the AMR program was conducted in the field and focused on the new AMR technology and electrical safety.
We expect to have installation of residential meters complete by the end of 2008. At the same time, we are deploying meters on business, irrigation and industrial accounts as well. That deployment will continue into 2009.
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