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CUC starts replacing 1,157 electric meters in Dandan
The Commonwealth Utilities Corp. has started this week replacing 1,157 electric meters in Dandan with newer units to cut down on losses arising from obsolete meters in the area.
CUC financial account manager Betty Terlaje said Wednesday that the project will be done within 30 days—or by the end of May.
Upon completing the meter installation in Dandan, Terlaje said, CUC will wait for one month to study the impact of the new meters, then Phase II of the project will commence within 30 days to allow CUC’s staff to maximize the software potential before expanding.
Right now, the old meters are the old model of the Nighthawk Advanced Metering Infrastructures electric meters.
Betty Terlaje
The newer model of the same electric meters will be installed. This is a federally funded project.
Terlaje held a presentation about the project during a CUC board meeting last Wednesday.
She said that, under the project, they are replacing the obsolete electro-mechanical meter models so that they can improve CUC’s metering and billing programs.
“In addition, it will provide quality management for distribution on the power generation side,” she said.
Terlaje said that an Advanced Metering Infrastructures is an integrated system of smart meters, communication networks, and data management systems that enable a two-way communication network between the utility and customers.
A Nighthawk AMI meter is capable of a two-way communication network using a Web-based metering system that commands radio frequencies through cellular towers.
CUC currently has over 3,000 Nighthawk AMI meters in its inventory.
Terlaje said the Web-based metering system is provided through a Web software portal called Adaptiv that allows for system organization of the meters and analysis of customer activity and meter data.
Among the many benefits are that there will be no more manual reading, reduced vehicle and fuel use resulting in savings, improved billing accuracy and billing credibility, real-time data that benefits the customers and CUC, and remote outage detection capabilities.
As of May 2018, CUC reported that they were able to install 491 AMI meters for residential and government accounts on Saipan.
