Northeast Utilities (NU) serves about two million electric and gas customers in three New England states. Connecticut Light & Power (CL&P), Public Service New Hampshire and Western Massachusetts Electric Co. (WMECO) are the electric utility companies in its service area.

In the late 1990s, restructuring legislation in Connecticut and Massachusetts required the unbundling of energy from distribution and transmission, which affected CL&P and WMECO. Because of the restructuring as well as the high cost of reading meters in these two states, interest in automatic meter-reading (AMR) deployment at NU greatly increased.

For more than a decade, NU has been deploying AMR meters. The early initiative involved only a surgical AMR strategy. However, by 1999, NU was concentrating on a 100% AMR deployment that required a hybrid approach. A mobile-AMR system was used along with targeted surgical methodologies to achieve the 100% AMR deployment desired.

As NU moved from manual meter reading to surgical AMR, then on to 100% flexible AMR (Flex-AMR), many challenges were encountered with positive and negative experiences. These challenges made it important for management to be flexible and consider the different AMR technologies available to best meet its needs.

AMR Justification

Cost savings is the base line for AMR deployment at NU. This was true in 1990 and is still true today, with more than 99% deployment in CL&P and WMECO. However, in deploying AMR technologies, NU is not just looking at cost savings but also at the flexibility of the technologies to meet future needs.

The decision for the AMR deployments was made with the support of DB Microware's Automated Reroute Control System (ARCS). The system easily identified hard-to-read and long average read time locations. Because 30% of CL&P's and WMECO's electric meters are indoors, many locations were costly to read and, therefore, potential surgical AMR locations.

Part of the surgical AMR strategy is to use nonutility infrastructure communication technologies. It is not economical to build a communications backbone throughout all or most of the service territory. At the same time, existing public communication channels were available. Therefore, NU used drive-by and walk-by Itron radio ERT technology for a vast majority of the surgical AMR deployments. Where additional data were needed, such as interval recording meters, the utility asked customers to provide a dedicated direct dial phone line to a modem meter. At NU, when customers provide a dedicated direct dial phone line to the meter, they are then able to choose their own billing date.

Between 1990 and 1999, 30% of the residential customers and 25% of the large commercial and industrial customers had surgical AMR installed. The utility benefits included a 35% reduction in meter readers even with more than 5% customer growth, 40% reduction in operating costs, 53% improvement in unread meters and 40% reduction in recordable meter-reading accidents.

Total Flex-AMR Basics

In 1999, NU revisited its AMR strategy in view of the realized surgical AMR benefits, restructuring and new emerging AMR technologies.

At this time, NU decided fully deploy AMR for all customers in Connecticut and Massachusetts. This decision was based primarily on cost savings, which revealed a better than 13% internal rate of return and less than five-year payback. Additional benefits included improved services, added flexibility of the technology and an enhanced ability to support customer choice.

Total AMR involved deploying mobile Itron ERT technology for all but a few thousand customers. By deploying one, two or three ERTs on flexible solid-state meters, billing determinates were available via mobile AMR for all rates except a few interval-recording customers.

All customers above 350 kW and load-research customers were included in the non-ERT technology solutions. Surgical AMR deployment of Flex-AMR technologies was chosen for advanced metering (interval recording and daily readings) customers using primarily telephone communications technologies. Advanced metering deployment included either a customer-provided dedicated phone line to a modem meter or a shared customer's phone line with Nertec Phone-Home technologies in an Itron Centron or Sentinel meter. Wireless cellular digital 1XRTT radio Nertec technology on Sentinel meters was installed where phone line installations were not economically viable.

Surgical AMR Advanced Technologies

All of the AMR meters deployed were new, and most were solid-state meters. Initially, NU was able to sell its meters at a good market value. As the project continued, the used meter market became saturated and the value dropped considerably. Solid-state meters were used because they are more flexible and accurate than their predecessors. They can easily adapt to different functionality by simply reprogramming the meter, or adding or replacing circuit boards.

In 1999, a sampling of solid-state meters was installed in series with electromechanical meters measuring the same load. The pilot ran for more than a year, and the results showed kilowatt-hours measured with solid state meters were more than 0.2% greater than the electromechanical meters. This accuracy advantage was used in the economic model for total AMR and contributed to more than US$4 million annually in revenue.

All polyphase installations have been converted to solid-state AMR meters, which employ smart meter technology for service and meter diagnostics. Therefore, all instrument transformer meters automatically detect service or metering problems before the customer receives an inaccurate bill.

It is a common belief that ongoing maintenance costs for telephone AMR technologies are costly and difficult to control. However, NU's experience with more than 8000 electric and gas customer-provided/shared phone lines has shown at least an 80% annual savings over the ongoing service fees for a wireless cellular digital solution. Because of this savings, only those locations where a phone line is not available or economically viable are scheduled for a cellular digital radio technology solution.

Surgically installed solid-state advanced metering can be dropped in anywhere throughout the service territory. Daily communications with advanced meters is achieved via Itron's MV90 or Nertec's SerViewCom. The advanced meters are also smart meters, where periodic health checks of their daily diagnostic readings quickly identify metering or service problems well before the customer is aware of any trouble.

Advanced meters installed on 350 kW or larger customers all measure time-of-day (TOD), kW and kVA demand. The flexible solid-state meters are programmed for kVA measurement for a nominal incremental fee allowing new kVA demand rates to be established. CL&P is in the process of implementing kVA rates because the solid-state meter easily measures kVA demand. In addition, with restructuring, distribution companies no longer have the generation resources to manage power factor, and controlling system losses with capacitor banks on the distribution system is an expensive solution. The kVA rates help place the burden of controlling power factor on the infringing customer rather than the utility.

The same surgical AMR technologies are also applied for customer choice, where the customers decide whether they want an advanced meter. CL&P and WMECO charges the customer for the incremental metering cost difference through regulated fees filed with the public utility commissions. Along with the daily-read interval metering, the approved fees include an option for Internet access to meter data.

Revenue gained through metering choice is not a dominant driver in justifying the economics for AMR deployment. Approximately $50,000 in annual revenues for these services is currently collected. Customer-metering choice supports customer needs, including load management, supplier choice and ISO-NE demand-response programs.

Flexible Multi-ERT AMR Meters

CL&P and WMECO have more than 115,000 demand meter locations (kWh energy and kW demand), and all were deployed using either Centron for single-phase or Sentinel for polyphase metering. One ERT provides kWh reads and the other provides kW demand billing reads. These meters also have the flexibility and capability of being upgraded to advanced meters if deemed necessary in the future.

In an effort to minimize the impact of delays in reading and billing these self-read meters, NU deployed the ability of programming all 20 cycles into ERT-demand meters via the DB Microware FieldNet meter order system. As the AMR ERT-demand meters are deployed, the FieldNet handheld programs the correct meter-reading cycle into the meter.

Multi-ERT meters are also used for residential TOD (on-peak, off-peak) customers and net (delivered kWh, received kWh) metering installations.

Labor Impact

Deploying AMR slowly at NU has had many workforce advantages. First, most of the meter-reader reductions were achieved through attrition. In the early stages of deployment, meter readers were told there would be few remaining meter-reading positions for driving the mobile meter-reading vehicles. Therefore, they were encouraged to enhance their skills through training and college courses and to seek other positions at NU. Over the deployment period, replacement meter reader positions were filled by temporary employees.

Although about 10% of the installations were outsourced, existing meter service installers and mechanics completed most of the installations. Through a mutual agreement with the union, meter readers also were temporarily upgraded to installer positions on a team installing residential AMR meters. This installation team installed more than 20% of the meters and also helped several meter readers gain the experience to find permanent positions in the NU workforce.

The Connecticut Department of Public Utility Control (DPUC) waived many scheduled meter tests and allowed bimonthly meter reads over much of the deployment period. This enabled the existing workforce to install more AMR meters, which allowed the cost to be capitalized rather than applied to normal maintenance or operating expense. This reduced the operating and maintenance expense costs over the deployment period, which unexpectedly and significantly contributed to the overall savings of the AMR deployment.

Benefits Gained and Lessons Learned

Early into total Flex-AMR deployment, NU purchased Yankee Gas, which included 100% deployed Itron AMR ERT-metered customers. The synergy of this acquisition allowed for the integration of both the electric and gas mobile systems into one mobile process, collecting both electric and gas ERT reading in a single drive down the street. This integration saved NU more than $400,000 in annual reading costs.

Another value gained from the Yankee Gas acquisition was the ability to save out-of-route ERT meter reads collected in the drive-by process. As the drivers were coming or going to their assigned route, the mobile data collection unit was left on and collected many out-of-route reads. After the merger, the out-of-route reading capability was expanded to include electric meters. The out-of-route read data are readily available to the customer service representative in the call center and for billing. The extra reads are often used for customer transfers or in place of field investigations. This data alone has saved two to three full-time equivalent (FTE) installers from what was planned for special reads and/or investigations, adding about $150,000 in annual savings.

Through total AMR deployment, every meter socket was touched by an installer/mechanic, and several were found to be in a dangerous condition. Most problems were encountered on underground direct buried services. Annual freezing and thawing in New England pulled the cable connected to the jaws and many jaws eventually broke. When changing the meter, the broken jaw sometimes moved with the meter shorting against the meter socket, causing an electrical flash.

As a result of so many flashes, NU instituted a policy of always using a meter puller when changing from a manual to AMR meter. The puller moved the installer/mechanic away from the possible flash, making the meter change safer. NU also decided to repair the customer-owned broken meter socket if it happened during the AMR conversion. However, this added to the cost of converting to AMR.

The final 0.5% of customers remaining to convert to AMR is proving to be the most difficult and costly. Many obstacles have been encountered, including trees growing against the meters, decks built around the meters, and twisted or loose meter sockets. These locations require customer involvement and sometimes prodding to correct the situation. Through phone calls, letter campaigns and ultimately threats to disconnect service, these locations end up costing double to triple the average conversion cost.

Today, a similar surgical strategy is being deployed at NU for remote disconnect radio pager technology. Remote disconnect adapters supplied by BLP are surgically deployed and installed between the AMR meter and the customer's meter socket only where needed and cost is justified. More than 1000 units are in use today, changing the way customers think about paying for their energy.

Conclusions

Total AMR deployment has improved the quality of metering and reading services at NU. Every customer enjoys improved customer service, fewer estimated bills and meter reads on schedule. Advanced metering is surgically deployed on all large customers as well as on those customers choosing this higher level of service. Smart meters are able to catch metering problems before they get to be billing situations. All of these advantages have been gained while savings have been realized since the first AMR meter was deployed in the early 1990s.

Surgical AMR deployment of advanced meters at locations where needed or desired by the customer/supplier is not new to the industry. In fact, most utilities deploy advanced meters in this same way. Metering is not one-size-fits-all, and various customer segments have differing needs. NU's surgical AMR strategy targets the metering and communications technologies to meet those needs.

Acknowledgments

The Flex-AMR project was managed by the Metering Services process involving every part of the organization along with Customer Service, Labor Relations and Human Resources. Thanks to the flexibility, creativity and energy of these employees, all of the expected and unexpected challenges were met and, through a collaborative process, are achieving extremely positive results.

Dave Scott received his BSEE and MBA degrees from Western New England College in Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S. He has been with Northeast Utilities (NU) for 31 years and is currently the manager of Meter Engineering. He is a member and former trustee of the Automatic Meter Reading Association as well as an active member of the EEI/AEIC Meter Service Committee. scottdr@nu.com

Surgical AMR Basics

The “Surgical AMR” term was first coined in the early 1990s. Its origins evolved from a similar term used by General H. Norman Schwarzkopf during the Gulf War. In the general's now infamous news conferences, he described this new U.S. military tactic called surgical bombing. It was from this event that the term “Surgical AMR” came to being. This strategy is defined as: Deploy AMR where needed using the right technology for the situation. At NU, the driving needs were cost savings, improving safety and customer service.