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Nearly 530 households will get smart meters
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Posted on Oct 07 2021
About 529 households in the CNMI are scheduled to have their Cashpower meters replaced with Nighthawk meters as part of an ongoing meter migration for households that connect to the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. through a prepay meter.
According to Commonwealth Utilities Corp. executive director Gary Camacho last Tuesday, this meter migration actually started last year, with the Nighthawk meters having a number of advanced features such as being able to read meters remotely and allowing customers to connect to the meter on their personal devices through Wi-Fi anywhere in the world to monitor usage and their monthly bills remotely.
By island, 386 households on Saipan, four on Tinian, and 139 on Rota will see their meters changed to the more advanced Nighthawk meters.
These were learned soon after CUC’s Cashpower token generating equipment at its Dandan office went down last Friday, which resulted in many prepay customers being unable to purchase prepaid meter tokens.
Camacho said that CUC was able to reinstate power for many customers and CUC will continue to reinstate power for many other households affected by the Cashpower token equipment failure until all meters are addressed.
In an Oct. 4 news statement, CUC explained that households equipped with Cashpower meters need prepaid tokens to remain operational. With the Cashpower token equipment going down last Friday, many customers were unable to purchase tokens, and as a result, lost power. To address this issue, CUC said its team of meter inspectors worked late last Friday night to switch out the token-based Cashpower meters with web-based Nighthawk smart meters.
Camacho said Tuesday the cause of the equipment failure of the Cashpower token generating equipment “is being looked into.”
For more information, CUC asks its customers to call its hotline at 236-4333 or visit its Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/CommonwealthUtilitiesCorporation for updates.
