Piedmont EMC, an electric cooperative based in Hillsborough, North Carolina, has selected Hunt Technologies to provide a two-way advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) system for its entire service territory.
Piedmont plans to fully deploy Hunt’s TS2 AMI system to 30,000 meters over the next three years. The utility’s service territory covers parts of six counties and includes a mix of rural, suburban and urban areas. TS2 uses a power line carrier-based technology to maintain continuous two-way communications with each meter. In addition to reporting daily power usage, TS2 provides advanced functionality, such as remote programmable time-based rate structures, outage detection, load control and remote service disconnect.
“We like the way the system integrates into our existing operation,” said Jared Goodnite, system engineer at Piedmont. “The technology is continuously communicating with each meter, so outage detection doesn’t require someone polling the system, and the system interfaces with our outage management software.”
Piedmont plans to retrofit the majority of its existing meter stock with TS2 modules. The utility also opted to use Hunt’s Managed Services Package for data hosting. This will allow the utility to access meter data anytime, anywhere there is an Internet connection, without having to manage software upgrades, licensing or servers.
Goodnite said Command Center, Hunt’s system software, was a factor in the utility’s selection of the TS2 system. “Command Center is easy to use and allows us to easily manage operations with a minimum of oversight,” he said.
