Assembly holds workshop on meter upgrades

Last week, on Nov. 10, the borough assembly met for a work session on the topic of electric meter upgrades. According to a memo from Electrical Superintendent Rod Rhoades, Wrangell Municipal Light & Power's metering system has been deemed obsolete by their software and hardware provider, ITRON. Their current metering system was developed in 1994, according to the memo, and ITRON has decided the continued use of this system, MV-RS, is no longer smart or cost effective. This means, Rhoades wrote, that the MV-RS system will no longer have technical support for the software or hardware by December of 2021.

Rhoades laid out a few potential courses of action for the assembly to consider. They could choose to do nothing, Rhoades wrote in his memo. Their system will continue to work past 2021, but if something breaks down they will not have a way to get it fixed. WML&P will have to go back to taking meter readings with paper and pencil and manually inputting the data for billing.

Another option Rhoades provided was to move to an Automatic Meter Reading system. ITRON has an automatic system known as FCS, he wrote, which uses smartphones or tablets to communicate with the meter through an encoder receiver transmitter, or ERT. However, he pointed out that none of Wrangell's meters have ERT modules in them. Moving to an automatic meter reading system would require replacement of all the meters across the borough. Rhoades wrote that this would be a hardware cost of about $653,675.

The final option presented to the assembly, one that Rhoades recommended, was to move to an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) system. This system would provide several advantages, he wrote, such as eliminating the need for monthly manual meter readings, the electrical system could be monitored more quickly, and would enable dynamic pricing and could raise or lower electrical prices based on demand, among other benefits. Moving to an AMI metering system would cost approximately $550,000, he wrote.

"The new metering system will take advantage of new technologies that will allow electrical meters to talk to each other (mesh network) and for those electrical meters to be read from a desktop computer," Rhoades wrote. "The mesh network will also have the added benefit of being able to support water metering, should Public Works and the Assembly decide to move in the direction of metered water supplies."

Much of the discussion amongst the assembly revolved around the necessity of these upgrades. Mayor Steve Prysunka said he wanted to be very sure that this would be a necessary cost before any money was spent. The assembly also wanted to know what other surrounding communities were doing with their metering systems, to see if there was anything to learn from them. Rhoades said that Ketchikan was moving to an AMI system, as well as the city of Petersburg. He also reiterated that their current metering system would continue to work even if it was obsolete, but without technical support from ITRON there was no way to tell how long it would work past the Dec. 2021 deadline. As this was only a workshop, no formal action was taken. The assembly asked Rhoades to continue to stay on top of the situation and to reach out to other communities for more information.