New Meter Technology Brings Better Outage Awareness

You may notice a new electric meter at your home or business as Columbia REA continues upgrading its metering technology. As these meters get changed out, our metermen will attempt to speak with the member prior to swapping out the old meter for the new meter. There is a short service interruption during this meter swap.

We are replacing our aging Aclara TWACS system with new Landis+Gyr (L&G) Mesh IP meters. Our existing system has served us well, but replacement meters and supporting hardware have become increasingly difficult to obtain. Columbia REA evaluated several replacement technologies before selecting the L&G Mesh IP system.

One of the most important benefits of the new system is improved outage detection. The meters can report the loss of power back to the cooperative, helping us identify outages more quickly without having to depend solely on a member calling to report them. Landis+Gyr’s outage-management technology is designed to use smart-meter information to help utilities detect and respond to outages more quickly. These new meters provide the same high quality data that the replaced meters do, which the cooperative uses for billing and members can view for themselves in the Smarthub app.

The new meters communicate through a Mesh IP network that can automatically adjust communication paths as conditions change, making the network more resilient when individual paths are disrupted. Overall, this is a behind-the-scenes upgrade that most members won’t interact with directly, but it gives Columbia REA better information and more capable technology to help us operate the electric system and respond when problems occur.