Council to hold public meetings on AMI project

Painesville residents and business owners will get an opportunity to learn more about the city’s new Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) project through three town hall meetings.

Each meeting will begin at 6 p.m. The first will be June 25 at Maple Elementary School, 560 W. Jackson St.; followed by one June 26 at Elm Street Elementary School, 585 Elm St.; and a final meeting at Heritage Middle School, 135 Cedarbrook Drive on July 31.

City Council is hosting these

meetings to address residents’ questions regarding this new project, according to the news release.

A few months ago, the city announced that it was moving forward with AMI, which is a new electric meter system to bring more reliable customer service to residents.

In addition to improving service to customers, AMI will be financially beneficial to the city and will improve

utility operations, Electric Superintendent Jeff McHugh said during a presentation to council.

Advanced Meters are digital meters that will replace the old analog meters used in homes to record electrical usage. Rather than relying on a utility personnel to manually read electric meters monthly at properties, digital meters record information automatically (typically every 15 minutes), sending readings back to the AMI system six times per day, the release states.

“When you think about each meter reporting back

status, load, voltage every 15 minutes — we have 12,000 meters,” McHugh said. “That’s a lot of information that can be used in a variety of ways by customers, businesses and by us.”

AMI will also reduce the loss of electricity and/ or theft and provide additional information to the electric department, so they can pinpoint potential issues.

The community is invited to attend one of the informational town hall meetings to gain a better understanding of how AMI works.