News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The Cookeville Energy Department plans to install advanced metering infrastructure for utilities during the upcoming fiscal year.
Cookeville Energy Department Director Carl Haney told city council he has budgeted some $900,000 for electric and gas meters. He said he plans to have some 7,200 meters installed this fiscal year. He said gas meters are easier to get on hand, and 20 of them have been installed and monitored to test proficiency.
“We’ve started reading them,” Haney said. “They’re actually already communicating with the UPN, which is our billing. So, they are communicating with it and everything looks good so far. We’re still waiting on electric meters. Those test meters for it. They’re supposed to come in in the next week or two.”
Haney said he plans to have all gas meters installed by next fall and be fully automatic in two year’s time.
“Once we start getting meters in, any new ones, we would go ahead and put the new one in it,” Haney said. “But after that, we’ll start identifying routes. We’re going to work with customer service to identify which one of those routes would be the best one, and that way, all three of us can get that route taken and that eliminates meter readers going to those routes.”
He said Algood only has city gas service, no electric. He said when the first batch of gas meters comes in, Algood will get automatic readers first to eliminate that route for readers who are traveling that route just to read gas meters.
The advanced meters allow the city to read meters remotes and receive data constantly to a database, rather than having to drive to each home and read the meter and record the data manually.
