Advanced meter installation completed

On Jan. 8, 2019, a contract worker from NexGen installed the first advanced meter for a Mississippi Power residential customer in Meridian.

Just 16 months later, in April 2020, the last of the customer bill groups in Laurel were moved into the production AMI network. All total, more than 196,000 meters were exchanged in the process.

“This is the culmination of two years of hard work by so many people at Mississippi Power, Southern Company, and our partners at Itron and NexGen,” Project Manager Donna Corr said. “It’s been a marathon, but this team overcame every obstacle we faced. Once we got to the installation phase, we gained momentum early and followed through.”

 

Every Monday afternoon, the AMI core team would gather in the Metering Services conference room – until the COVID-19 pandemic altered the meetings to teleconferences – to review progress, lay out the weekly plan and review the overall project. After completing work in the Meridian area, the process moved to Coastal Mississippi last summer and to the Pine Belt in November.

Metering Services Manager Ricky Follin praised the team for their commitment to this project while maintaining their day-to-day job functions.

“We didn’t create a new organization or have a huge team,” Follin said. “We used our assets and resources wisely, managed the technology dogmatically and kept close eye on the budget and financial targets. Everyone was committed to our goal of ‘on time and on budget’ from the beginning.”

So far in 2020, in the areas where advanced meters have already been installed, the company has avoided more than 24,000 visits to customer homes or businesses. Corr says the company’s just beginning to realize the benefits of the new meters.

“The first thing you think of when it comes to advanced meters is the monthly meter read and not all the other orders that are processed over-the-air,” Corr said. “We have remote connect and disconnect services and high bill re-reads that are so important to our customers. Also, we’re reducing the risk to our employees by eliminating a premise visit. We’re updating operating procedures and working with employees on providing the same customer service with this new technology.”

Corr thanked several groups for their work on this project, namely the Billing Services team, Supply Chain, the CENCOM and DCC teams, the Customer Care Center, Distribution Technology, and SCS Technology teams, the Distribution operations field teams and Plant Watson for staging meters during the process.

“Integrating a new technology and installing nearly 200,000 advanced meters takes big picture objectives and timelines, but it was the attention to the details each step of the way that led to such a successful result,” Power Delivery General Manager Randall Pinkston said. “This is and will continue to be a win-win for the company and our customers, and I’m grateful for the hard work of everyone involved.”

Mississippi Power, a subsidiary of Southern Company (NYSE: SO), produces safe, reliable and environmentally responsible energy for more than 188,000 customers in 23 southeast Mississippi counties. With nearly 160 megawatts of approved solar energy capacity, Mississippi Power is the largest partner in providing renewable energy in the state of Mississippi. Visit our website at mississippipower.com, like us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

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