Last week Opus Energy summarised a story from Pepco,which had used smart meters to help them restore power in Washington D.C.following Hurricane Sandy.Today,further examples of the benefits of smart meters in the wake of storms in the USA have been released by the Environmental Defence Fund.
Baltimore Gas and Electric(BG&E)has used smart meters to help them restore power.The meters also tell the company if its restoration efforts have been successful,meaning they don't have to call customers to check;according to the article,two in three of such calls wouldn't be answered in storm conditions,meaning the company would have to dispatch crews.Jeannette Mills,BG&E's VP of Customer Operations,reports"a much higher rate of success getting through to smart meters than we do reaching customers by phone".
The benefits of smart meters post-storms were first shown a few years ago,notably by Alabama Power following 190mph tornadoes in April 2011.At that time 400k were left without power,but the utility company used its 1.4m smart meters to locate the outages and prioritise repairs.As a result,all customers'power was restored within a week.
