NGEMC plans firmware upgrades to all AMI meters
NGEMC’s smart grid technology provides essential benefits to the members and the operations center. Members may review their energy use on a daily basis and opt to receive energy use alerts. The smart grid aids in power restoration by sending outage notifications to the operations center and promotes automation and self-healing
solutions in certain scenarios.
As with all electronic systems, upgrades are required from time to time. Beginning this month, our partner, Allegiant, will begin the process of upgrading meters, neighborhood by neighborhood. The upgrade will result in a brief interruption of power which should not exceed fifteen minutes. As a courtesy, contractors will knock on your
door before they disconnect power to your meter.
No NGEMC employee or contractor will require access to the inside of your home or request payment from you in person. If you have questions about anyone who visits your home claiming to be from NGEMC, please call our office via one of our published phone numbers to verify the identity of the contractor or employee. Again, never allow access to your home or provide payment or personal information to anyone claiming to be associated with a local power company.
The upgrade process will take several months to complete. We will publish a list of areas where the contractors are working each week on this page.
AMI Upgrade FAQ's
Our Automated Metering Infrastructure (AMI) meters are used to measure each member’s electric use and transmit back the actual amount of energy used. In addition to providing a more-accurate reading than traditional meters, AMI meters allow members to monitor their daily energy use and help our System Operations team automatically detect outages. This feature allows us to identify which locations need to be restored and deploy our line crews quickly, even if the member is not present or otherwise unable to report the outage.
No, NGEMC widely implemented AMI meters in 2012. Like all technology, upgrades are needed from time to time in order to keep the meters operating at peak efficiency.
The meter upgrade does involve physically swapping out the meter. This will result in an outage that will last no longer than 10 minutes.
The upgrades are expected to take up to four months beginning in July of 2020. Crews will be working neighborhood by neighborhood. We will post a weekly update of where our crews are expected to be working on this page.
In addition to this web page, crews will knock on each door and notify the resident before their meter is switched out.
The meter change-out is only an upgrade to keep your meter operating at peak performance. You should not notice a change in your service, and there will be no impact on your power bill.
If you have other questions, please send us a message and a member of our communications team will reach out to you.