“When someone pulls that meter, we will get that alert so as far as someone tampering with a meter, this will give us a heads up that we might want to send someone out to check this out,” Taylor added. We have found butter knives that have been sawed off to be the same length as those blades and shoved in to get power in the house.” “You wouldn’t think about it but theft services is a real thing. “These meters have tilt detection like when someone steals services,” Shell said. “It’s not staying off as long and it’s running harder and when it gets down so cold, and the emergency strips come on on your heat pump, that’s when it’s really pulling a lot of electricity when those strips are on.”Īll three of the men shared that theft of electric services are more common than what many people may think with individuals going to different measures to get power into a home – many time risking their own life to do so. “When it gets down to 20 to 30 degrees outside, your heat pump has to work a whole lot harder to keep the house at that 70 degrees and that is why the electric usage goes up.
“Most of the time what that is is your heat pump is keeping your house set at 70 degrees and it’s 50 degrees outside,” Shell explained. When asked about why it seems that the months of winter seem to bring higher bills even if customers feel they aren’t using as much or because the month was warmer, Shell broke it down using maintaining a set temperature in a residence. It could possibly show people what they are using and help them to cut back on usage.” “You could see that well we are not home from 8 to 4 but when we get home -you could see that peak going up. Or you are using more power between 12 and 3 pm to give you a better look at that. Taylor added, “So for example should someone come and instead of saying they used this much this month, you could get a better look at it and say well you were using the most power between 5 and 8 pm. You can look down at the day down to the hour and help you pinpoint that.” “You can look at the usage and see when the most power is used to kind of help you determine what’s going on. “It won’t tell you what is causing it but it might help to narrow it down. “You can look at the load profile and see what they are using and when they are using it,” Bowman shared. The new meters will constantly be sending data back to the electric system allowing the utility to make a deeper dive on why a customer’s bill is excessively high. There are not too many customers who have not received an electric bill and almost fainted after seeing the total due for the month. “Instead of having to wait on customer order workers to be able to go through all their cut on and cut-offs, while they are sitting there with the customer service representative, they will be able to cut it on or cut it off.” “Now, when they come in we will be able to cut it off from the office and get the reading and we will be able to cut it back on and get the instant reading here and save that trip. “If it’s like an apartment complex or someone is renting a house, in the past, we would have to go out and boot the meter where electricity couldn’t flow through it, and then when someone new moves in they have to go back out there again and pull the meter to take the boots off, stick it back in, and get the reading then come back in.
Shell shared that customers will have a better experience in regards to getting services turned on and off if the residence is currently served by the utility. The outages will be tied into emails so when on the weekends the power goes out it will send an email to the on-call person.” “Sometimes it’s just peace of mind to them to know for sure that they got to speak to someone. “The answering service will still answer after hours and during a storm, we will still have people in here to answer phones because people want to talk to somebody. “Customers are still going to call and we will still have people,” Shell continued. You get everyone’s lights back on say in Hurley Hollow and then you move on up the creek and you start getting a couple of calls from up there where you have missed a transformer or something. It’s hard to know if a pump went out, a single pump, went out before the storm or when the whole line went out,” commented Shell. “It will keep you from missing a house or two here and there when you have the whole hollow back on. Shell said that will also be a huge benefit of having the new meters. Single outages are one thing but what about when a large area loses power and a resident looks around the neighborhood and most of their neighbors have power back on but they don’t.
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