The City of San Marcos has earned a second national award on its "smart meter" project that will give customers online information about their electric and water use and better control over consumption. CS Week and Electric Light & Power magazine recently awarded its "Best Smart Infrastructure/ Grid Project" to the City of San Marcos for its "robust smart metering system and fully integrated billing system." The City received the award at a conference in Nashville, Tenn.
Team members from the winning utilities presented project-specific workshops the last morning of CS Week 2010, sharing lessons learned and innovative techniques used to achieve their goals. CS Week is the premier meter-to-cash educational conference for customer service, IT and field service professionals from electric, gas, water and wastewater utilities throughout North America.
The San Marcos smart meter system, expected to be operational in early 2011, will allow customers to track and adjust energy usage throughout the month and alert the utilities to power outages and water leaks for a faster response. "We are very proud of the extraordinary effort dedicated to this project by Public Services, including our Water and Electric Utilities, Technology Services, and Utility Billing staff" said Mayor Susan Narvaiz. "Smart meters will give customers greater ability to manage their consumption, while improving our operations as well."
The smart meters will provide more accurate meter readings, faster connects and disconnects, identify water leaks and power failures more quickly, and provide better tracking of customer demand and system loads for the City water and electric utilities.
The project, initiated in 2008, has replaced water and electric meters with new meters that can be read remotely. Radio transmitters send frequent readings to the utility office with information available to the customer online. In 2009, the City and its contractors on the project, Eka Systems and UtiliWorks, were also honored at "DistribuTECH 2009," a national conference in San Diego, for the smart meter project, which was named "Project of the Year."
City of San Marcos NEWS
630 E. Hopkins San Marcos, Texas 78666
Contact: Melissa Millecam, Communications/ Intergovernmental Relations Director
512.393.8105
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