Following Memphis City Council’s approval of the 60,000 smart meter purchase in September 2013, MLGW executed the contract with Elster Solutions and MLGW has now completed the installation of smart meters and the associated telecommunications system. In addition, a meter data management system has been configured to store smart meter data, which is successfully integrated that with our Customer Information System (CIS) for service orders and billing. Additionally, CIS was interfaced with Elster’s headend system which allows events like tamper alerts to be received and acted upon by MLGW. The software integration has been complex and our crews have worked diligently to meet an aggressive project timeline.

Project results

• To date, only 3.6 percent of the residential customers that are in the smart meter footprint (the geographic area where the smart meters were deployed) have opted out.
   
• To validate remote read data, manual meter reads continued until September 2014.
   
• In September, after months of testing and data verification, footprint customer’s bills were generated exclusively from smart meter data.
   
• MLGW hasn’t received any high bill complaints from smart meter customers.
   
• Water leak detection and tamper alert functionality have been activated and is working well—helping to identify theft and even improving
  our manual metering processes.
   
• There have been no fires associated with smart meter installs.

Outage reporting, online customer access to personalized usage data and prepay will be available in the coming months. These enhancements will provide greater options and savings for approximately four percent of all MLGW customers.

It is now time to move forward with the full scale smart meter implementation in Memphis and Shelby County and provide 100 percent of MLGW customers with the service, efficiency and options this new technology provides. If approved by City Council, MLGW's plan is to complete full scale implementation of smart meters by the end of 2020.

To learn more about smart meters, go to mlgw.com/smart-grid.