Sawnee EMC to Deploy Automated Meter Reading (AMR) Technology

Sawnee Electric Membership Corporation (Sawnee EMC) is dedicated to serving its membership through the delivery of highly reliable electric service under a wide range of conditions at competitive rates.  To further this commitment, effective April 2008, Sawnee EMC will deploy a new system to read meters and collect meter information.  This project is called “Automated Meter Reading” or AMR.  This multi-year project will involve the installation of approximately 150,000 (approximately 50,000 each year) new watt-hour electric meters at the homes and businesses of Sawnee’s members.  This project will also include the installation of communication equipment at over 35 substations located throughout Sawnee EMC’s seven county service territory.  The AMR system functions by utilizing a digital watt-hour meter that collects and sends meter reading data through a communication network across Sawnee EMC’s power lines and substations.  This network is ultimately connected to Sawnee’s headquarters located in Cumming, Georgia.  Once the meter information is received at Sawnee EMC’s offices, the information is integrated with its computer systems for billing purposes, outage notification, engineering studies, power interruption and general review.  The staff of Sawnee EMC also anticipates that the information gathered through AMR will be readily available for review by Sawnee members through a secure web site.   

There are many benefits to the AMR system.  For instance, Sawnee EMC will have the capability of collecting “hourly” information on all of its member’s accounts.  This will give Sawnee EMC an operational flexibility that does not exist with traditional “dial” electric meters.   The new AMR system will further eliminate errors by discontinuing the process of a person visiting each meter location every month and manually placing a reading into a hand-held computer.  This new metering technology will provide other “new” features such as tamper notification, outage detection, and blink count.  Through careful research, the AMR project shows a payback, from an economic prospective, within approximately 2-3 years and will ultimately produce a savings throughout its lifetime.

The AMR project is scheduled to reach completion in mid 2011.  Sawnee EMC members can find additional information and details regarding the AMR system by using the links to the left of this text or by contacting the Customer Call Center at 770-887-2363 or via email at customerservice@sawnee.com.