New smart meters give electric customers power to save
SPRINGFIELD — Your electric meter will soon be able to communicate with you in real time.
That means a warning if you are using more power, and spending more money, than you'd planned. This week, Eversource executives demonstrated the new smart meter technology for The Republican, timed with the rollout of the meters in its Springfield-area service territory.
"No surprises at the end of the month," said Eric Falcone, advanced meter infrastructure operations manager. "The meter will tell you if you are exceeding your budget when there is time to reduce your use."
Eric Falcone, advance meter infrastructure operations manager at Eversource, speaks Thursday about the new smart metering system that is being rolled out in August. (Douglas Hook / The Republican)Douglas Hook
Eversource installed the first few meters this week in the homes of company employees. The test is doing well, and customers should start getting notifications soon. A formal kickoff is set for Aug. 6 at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Work will happen in and around Springfield first, then in areas served by service crews based in Hadley and finally in Eversource's Pittsfield region. All the new meters should be installed by the end of the first quarter of 2026.
The three investor-owned electric utilities in Massachusetts — Eversource, National Grid and Unitil — are all rolling out their own smart meter projects.
National Grid said Thursday it's installed more 115,000 smart meters, with a goal of installing 1.4 million over the next three years. Monson, Hampden, East Longmeadow, Wilbraham, Palmer, Belchertown and Granby are slated for installation later this year.
Eversource said that, for about the last 20 years, it's been able to read meters somewhat remotely. The older meters broadcast a signal, and a meter reader drives around a neighborhood once a month with a receiver.
The new meters are broadcasting to each other and to utility-pole-mounted units every few miles. These are connected wirelessly and serve a few thousand customers each.
Customers can access the data from their smart meter via their online account.
For customers who get the alert, the solution might be turning off a pool heater or adjusting a thermostat, said Jared Lawrence, Eversource's senior vice president of customer operations and digital strategy, and chief customer officer.
It might mean turning off the lights.
The meter and the utility's data center will help you there.
A receiver on a utility pole collects information in real time from a smart meter and reports it to the energy company Eversource and its customers. (Douglas Hook / The Republican)Douglas Hook
As the meter learns your home and your habits, it'll learn to pinpoint power use and suggest changes in habits or equipment, Falcone said.
Lawrence said that the machine learning process will take about four months and require homeowners to fill out a survey.
Eventually, the meter will learn enough to recommend money-saving strategies, like municipal aggregation or new heating and cooling, or something as simple as shifting energy-intensive uses — like the clothes dryer — to off-peak times.
The smart meters are talking with each other and Eversource, gathering 6 million data points from Eversource's 1.4 million customers in 159 towns.
That'll help the utility manage outages.
"You won't have to call us when you're out of power," Falcone said. "We'll know."
And know when power is restored. Utility crews won't have to — as they've done for decades — drive around the neighborhood looking for porch lights to know if the power is on.
Eric Falcone, advance meter infrastructure operations manager at Eversource, demonstrates the new smart metering system that is being rolled out in the company's coverage area. (Douglas Hook / The Republican)Douglas Hook
And smart meters also will allow the utility to turn off power when a customer closes out an account.
The meters will help Eversource monitor how much power to send into a circuit, maintaining minimums without sending too much.
Lawrence said feedback from the meters will let Eversource learn more about its own system.
"If you think about it today, we are kind of in the dark," he said. "We don't receive data from customers."
Stories by Jim Kinney
Read the original article on MassLive .
