Washington Electric Cooperative, which serves 10,500 members in 41 towns in north-central Vermont, will soon become the third Vermont electric utility to install “smart meters” on its system.
Speaking at the annual meeting of the co-op at the Elks Club in Montpelier, officials said the installation of the meters will be a boon for its customers and the cooperative, allowing it to improve efficiency, track outages and give its members more information on its very extended rural system.
“These meters can talk to the co-op, and we can talk to them,” said co-op general manager Avram Patt, explaining how the devices will be able to send data and receive information.
Patt said the co-op “dodged a bullet” by going with a technology that uses the electrical wires to send data instead of radio frequency transmissions, which have drawn resistance in Vermont over privacy and health concerns over the wireless transmissions. That technology is half as expensive and also works better on the co-op’s rural terrain, he said.
The state’s two largest utilities, Central Vermont Public Service and Green Mountain Power, have both opted for wireless smart meters. Controversy over their use became an issue in the Legislature this past session with opponents winning passage of a bill that prohibits the utilities from charging an opt-out fee until at least July 2013.
Vermont Electric Cooperative in Johnson has virtually finished its installation of a wired system of smart meter technology similar to what WEC plans, according to Patt. VEC is larger, with 34,000 members in 74 towns in northern Vermont. Burlington Electric began its installation of smart meters in April, using the wireless technology.
The co-op plans to begin installing its meters this June, said WEC President Barry Bernstein, and is aiming to finish its installation of the meters by the end of the year, a tight timeline. A work schedule is still in flux but the process of swapping out existing meters for the advanced devices will be organized by electrical substations across the co-op’s extensive territory, Patt said. Its service area covers 2,728 square miles in the counties of Washington, Orange, Caledonia and Orleans and it has approximately 1,200 miles of distribution line, with eight substations.
One of the key advantages for the co-op is that it will be able to signal the smart meters and almost instantly discover where outages have occurred across its rural territory, making repairs much easier to direct, said Dan Weston, director of engineering and operations.
“Right now you are human remote devices that call in and let us know your power is out. We are going to replace you,” he told the annual meeting gathering, drawing laughter.
But Weston and others said the benefits of the $2 million project, of which the co-op is paying 50 percent as part of its regular capital expenditures, are serious.
Bill Powell, who handles services and energy conservation for the co-op, said members will be able to get an hour by hour breakdown of their usage, 365 days a year. They will also be able to participate in optional innovative options down the road to reduce electrical rates.
That “much better granularity” of information will help the co-op better plan its power needs and usage and customers discover how they are using their power, he said.
All of Vermont’s utilities are moving to install smart meters as part of a larger project to create a “smart grid” using digital data that will improve reliability and energy conservation, the electrical infrastructure, and the information needed to run it. The installation of smart meters in Vermont is being driven by some $3.5 billion nationwide allocated by the Obama administration as part of its $787 billion economic stimulus package after the 1998 recession. Vermont received $69 million for the roll-out of the smart meter technology statewide.
Patt cautioned that the devices are a useful tool and not some electrical angel or devil.
“In some cases they were oversold as changing the world, and on the other hand, there’s been a lot said that’s negative that’s been a bit overhyped,” he said.
According to Patt, one benefit is that those who send power back into the grid with solar devices – so called net-metering – will be able to get a readout of exactly how much power they are generating, which is not possible with the current meters. The new meters, which were displayed at the meeting, look just like the existing ones, except they contain a microchip and have a digital readout.
In response to questions about privacy of the data and trends of increased government snooping, Patt said the co-op’s elected board is writing its own privacy rules as well as working with state and utility officials statewide to draft rules. He said the co-op would not sell any of the data but planned to make it available only for internal management and planning and to its members – which should offer solace to those using high-intensity grow lights for an illegal crop.
“That is one concern that some people have,” he said to laughter.
ACLU Vermont Executive Director Allen Gilbert, a co-op member, called on the utility to ensure that its rules preclude usage data being turned over to law enforcement without a warrant. He also said he thought statewide rules should provide that any customer should be notified if a subpoena is issued for electrical usage information and allowed to fight it in court.
“What we’re really dealing with is an issue much larger than smart meters,” Gilbert said, citing growing and widespread data collection of everything from private prescription drug usage records to cell phone data.
Editor’s note: Avram Patt, the general manager of Washington Electric Co-op, said his utility is the fifth to install smart meters. The Department of Public Service says the Co-op is the third. We went with the latter.
