Edmond residents will soon be able to keep a closer eye on water, electric bills

EDMOND — Hourly data that shows each utility customers' use of water and electricity is within weeks of becoming available after a yearslong process.

The effort to complete a digitized, automated meter system for city-operated services will wrap once officials launch a web-based portal customers can use to review their data.

Once the portal is active, customers will be able to obtain that hourly water and electricity usage data for the previous day for their home or business accounts.

The information already is being collected through a wireless network, eliminating the need for city workers to make monthly checks on meters serving customers' homes and businesses.

Customers will benefit because they will be able to use the information provided through the portal to better control their consumption rates, preventing surprisingly large bills.

"With the AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure, or smart meters) system, we can read meters a couple of times a day and we can take that information and present the previous day's usage back to the customer," said Glenn Fisher, director of Edmond Electric.

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"So, instead of waiting until a month after the fact to get a bill that just combines an entire month's worth of usage into one reading, they will be able to see hourly data from the previous day, and that is what we are aiming to get our customers," Fisher said.

"If they wanted to see how much water they would use when they turned on all their sprinklers and let them run, they could do that. If they changed out appliances, they could see if that made a difference in how much water or power they use.

"There are a lot of different things they can do with it," Fisher said.

Edmond utility users' data collected using wireless technology

Utilities across the nation are upgrading to smart meter systems because they reduce their operational costs and provide both them and their customers with significantly more information about usage patterns than they previously were able to obtain.

Edmond utility workers have been testing the wireless network it is using to collect the data for months, ensuring the flow of information remains constant and is accurate.

Here's how it works:

• Water usage data collected by meters on Edmond homes or businesses is transmitted to digital electric meters serving the same customers.

• The electric meters transmit both the water and power usage data (which does not include any personally identifiable information) to pole-mounted transceivers that send the data across an encrypted network to secure servers operated by the city.

• Software used by the city processes the data to calculate customers' bills, plus generates the usage information customers will be able to see through the portal.

None of the data collected can be released by Edmond to an outside party without a customer's written permission, a city spokesman said.

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Edmond's digitization process for utility meters slowed by COVID-19 caused supply chain issues, officials say

Edmond began to upgrade its electric and water metering systems during the first quarter of 2020 after hiring Utility Partners of America to build and install the new units, Fisher said.

But as COVID-19 swept across the country, the production of new meters needed to upgrade the system was slowed by supply chain issues that made it hard for the manufacturer to get the plastic and computer chips needed to complete that work.

The pandemic also slowed work to get new meters actually installed into Edmond's water and electric systems because barriers against face-to-face meetings made coordinating that work more difficult.

"We were stumbling around, trying to find ways to continue to operate involving everything from keeping our crews healthy and safe to trying to work through those issues remotely," Fisher said.

The last smart meters Utility Partners of America were tasked to install were put into Edmond's system in August.

After that, Edmond began to test the smart-meter data against information city utility workers were still collecting manually to ensure accuracy of the data collected by the new meters.

By mid-December, Edmond had verified data accuracy for about a quarter of its customers, hoping to complete its review before the end of March.

Meanwhile, it also worked with Silver Blaze, a component of Harris Utility Systems (the vendor who provides the utility billing software to Edmond) to build the portal for customers.

If the entire network were to fail, Edmond workers could still read meters manually in a "worst-case scenario" situation, Fisher said.

"It has been a definite challenge," Fisher said about the process to get the conversion complete. "It took us a lot longer than we hoped and anticipated it would."

Edmond smart meters data already helping to improve utility services, director says

While Fisher said he expected smart meters would provide the city's electric utility with additional information, he also said he was surprised about how much data it supplies.

The city instantaneously can determine the extent of an electricity outage when one happens, rather than having to send a crew out to investigate after getting calls from customers that there are problems.

Also, smart electric meters notify Edmond whenever they overheat because of a wiring problem involving either the meter stand or home and can be deactivated remotely to prevent fires from happening.

"We are receiving a lot more alerts and alarms related to how our system is operating. We knew those were parts of the system, but now we have some real-world examples about how they work.

"It helps when we are troubleshooting a problem," Fisher said.

Beyond that, the hourly data gives both Edmond's water and electric utilities much more complete pictures of usage rates and when peaks occur, giving them the ability to be better prepared to meet those demands.

Eventually, Edmond will use that information to develop future time-of-use rate plans that could discount customers' bills if they restrict usages to off-peak hours.

"I am excited not only about the data we will get and how we can use it to operate our program more efficiently, but also about the programs it could allow us to offer our customers," Fisher said.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Edmond utility customers will be able to track water, electric usage