Nebraska Public Power District plans electric meter upgrades

Residents of Bloomfield, Nebraska, will see thousands of electric meters replaced beginning next week, when the Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD) begins planned October upgrades.

The meter replacements are part of a program in 2018 to replace 43,000 existing electric meters in 33 communities served at retail by NPPD. The new meters possess digital metering technology, with the capability to communicate back and forth between operators and the device.

The new meters utilize Advanced Metering Infrastructure technology and come with digital LED displays. They send information through the cloud to NPPD, making tracking of electric data purely remote. The new meters will allow NPPD personnel to automatically read electric meters from service centers, provide a higher level of customer service, help customer service representatives troubleshoot billing concerns, and improve electric service reliability and power quality for customers.

“The installation of the AMI systems will help maintain competitive electric rates by reducing operating expenses,” Tim Arlt, NPPD retail general manager, said. “With these units we can also pinpoint the exact location of outages quicker, meaning a faster response time to restore power.”

NPPD notes that the wireless transmission being utilized by these new devices is incapable of controlling any appliances or electronics within the structure to which they are attached. They are purely an informational relay, and NPPD will establish routers throughout the community to forward that information.