The Cookeville City Council discussed purchasing another batch of gas meters for the city’s automatic metering project during Tuesday’s work session.
Energy Department Director Carl Haney said the city is looking at buying an additional 4,000 gas meters for an estimated $411,000. Haney said he would like to purchase more meters even though the city is still waiting for some purchased meters to be delivered.
“They are getting out to about a 30-week lead time now,” Haney said. “So we want to go ahead and get our next order, go ahead and get in for next year, since the lead times are getting so long. This order will put us up to right at 100 percent. Once we get these in, we will see how many more we need.”
Haney said the Energy Department has 40 percent of advanced gas meters and about 30 percent of advanced electric meters installed. Haney said the energy department has made good progress so far on meter installations.
“We’re completing right now, oh gosh, a couple hundred or more a month right now,” Haney said. “We’re getting them in on the gas side.”
The city council had approved adding a position that would strictly help with installing advanced meters. Haney said the additional position has been a big help.
The council asked Haney if the advanced metering would provide daily updates as far as usage. Haney said that it will be possible.
“You can get them anytime at any interval you want,” Haney said. “And at that time, we will probably be able to set it up for customers to get logged on, and they will be able to monitor their usage as well once we get to that point.”
City Manager James Mills reminded the council that the city is behind on implementing an advanced metering system.
“A lot of other utilities and cities have done this, and we talked about it for years and years and just never pulled the trigger,” Mills said. “We’ve got some catching up to do, but we are doing that now.”
Mills said the city is excited to move forward with the project. The council will vote on the purchase this Thursday.
