Flippin' the Switch

Episode Two - Hurricane Preparedness, PTSD Month, Advanced Metering Infrastructure

June 11, 2019 Jones-Onslow EMC
Flippin' the Switch
Episode Two - Hurricane Preparedness, PTSD Month, Advanced Metering Infrastructure
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Run Time:
37 minutes

Topics discussed in this episode: 
Hurricane Preparedness with Onslow County Emergency Management Director Norman Bryson, PTSD Month with Commander Andrew Martin, United States Navy, and JOEMC rolls out a new technology (advanced metering infrastructure or AMI) this year and project manager Aaron Spencer talks "AMI 101".

Steve Goodson:

Welcome listeners to the latest episode of Flippin' the Switch, a podcast brought to you by the folks at Jones-Onslow EMC. This is Steve Goodson and I'm your host and I'll be with you each month. I'll be sharing things about the co-op and what we're doing in the community energy efficiency tips that you can use around the home. Cool things that we're doing to assist our members to enhance customer service and much more. So with that said, let's start flipping the switch. My first guest is Norman Bryson and Norman is Emergency services Director for Onslow County and we're gonna talk hurricane season 2019 so Norman, thank you for joining us.

Norman Bryson:

Thank you Steve.

Steve Goodson:

Alright, let's get into it. So based on the experts, and I know you said you did some research last week, what should folks in our community expect this season as it relates to activity and intensity and maybe compare that to 2018 last year.

Norman Bryson:

So Steve, we got two predictions that come out. One is from Colorado State University and the other one is from NOAA, the national weather service. What we're looking in the 2019 predictions between the two is Colorado state is saying we're probably going to have about 13 named storms. The national weather service is predicting nine to 15 five major storms and from Colorado State they're saying anywhere between four to eight hurricanes, which is category three or five or three up to a five and then national weather service is saying that there's a chance for two to four major hurricanes. Their predictions are, you know, they're not that far off. Both of them are saying it's around normal to below normal season. One of the big things that from Colorado state side is they also put a prediction out there that says there's a 28% chance at least one of the major hurricanes would make landfall on the eastern United States. And you know, you're talking about a greater than one fourth percent of chance of having a storm coming in. Now, if we compare that to 2018 in 2018, we had 15 named storms, eight of those became hurricanes and Florence and Michael made landfall in the United States. Of course Florence affected here in eastern North Carolina and South Carolina. And then Michael made landfall in the panhandle of Florida and came up between those two storms. There was a hundred fatalities and$50 billion in damages in eastern United States because of those two storms.

Steve Goodson:

You and I were talking before we started recording this thing and it's amazing what we've just went through. Jones-Onslow a couple of weeks ago, got our notification from FEMA of our reimbursement for funds that we've spent, we serve six counties, serve 75,000 folks. And so just take that number that you gave and multiply that by a bunch and that's how you get, I mean that's how you get that number.

Norman Bryson:

Well, if you look at Onslow County alone, you're looking at 11,000 homes and businesses were damaged from Florence alone. And if you look at the dollar figure, it was estimated at$515 million in damages and that doesn't include the school system. It also doesn't include agricultural or anything along those lines. And the counties even got upwards of$9 million tied up in debris removal from the storm. So, and when you're looking at reimbursement from debris the county could be up to 18 months to two years before we get our reimbursed.

Steve Goodson:

So talk about Florence. So I was down at a lot of meetings going on last September and we've been involved in some action planning as a community after that as well. I think we pretty much determined that what we thought we knew about hurricanes and how they were going to react...all that stuff kind of went out the window with Florence. So tell me just some lessons learned from Florence, some things that you folks learned down at the county and down at emergency management and how that kind of impacts moving forward into this year and into future hurricane seasons.

Norman Bryson:

One of the biggest changes, and people will hear me preach a lot of this, is we're going to change how we do our messaging about the storms. In the past we have talked about category, category, category of the storm, and the category only reflects the wind strength of a storm. Well because of Florence, which was predicted to be a four, which we did not get hit by a four, we got hit by a, basically, category one strength winds. However, there was rain associated with that. You can't, you can't associate the amount of rain that we got with any level of category. So in the future, our messaging to the citizens are going to be related to the category which will be that wind strength. Another piece will be the storm surge with Florence coming across as a category four for so long. And then downgrading right before it hit us. It built up a lot of water in front of it. So we got a category two to category three type of storm surge on our beaches even though we were only receiving a category one storm. So there again there's a difference between what the category in the wind is going to be versus what the storm surge may do.

Steve Goodson:

Yeah. The other piece of it too I think is interesting is, and I know y'all obviously take this into play as well, the speed at which we saw the hurricane coming. You know, you say what's the lesser of two evils. Would you rather have a category four that comes in and rolls in and out in an hour and leaves or would you rather have a category one that came and honestly pounds us like Florence did and made, you know, that's what obviously calls so much of the storm surge but also just calls the massive amounts of rain so that the actual speed of the hurricane itself, you know, lends to the moisture

Speaker 3:

wait, which is a part of what we also want to talk about is duration. How long are the duration of these things going to effect? And of course that other piece is the rainfall, which does not associate anything to these categories whatsoever. And not to be too much of a pun, but we also can't think that Florence was our high watermark, even at 40 inches of rain. I've done some research. It is not been the most rainfall that we've ever seen from a hurricane over a hundred years ago and an unnamed storm. We've got records showing that 56 inches of rain dropped up in amazing Ol area at one point in time. So it's not been the highest amount of rainfall totals that we've ever seen. It's just the highest amount we've seen an hour

Speaker 2:

in our lifetime. It seems like every couple of years we're having to have an 800 year mark. Yes, yes. So finally, let's talk about moving forward this year, this hurricane season, give our folks a little advice maybe before the storm, during the storm, after storm, just provide some quick tidbits. I know, like you said Y'all, y'all learned a lot. Y'All y'all done a great job in the past already but, but kind of being thrown into the mix with Florence and her just doing what she decided to do, y'all took away lessons. So talk to our listeners what folks can do. Just a couple of things before the storm, during the storm and after the storm just to be prepared.

Speaker 3:

Well first and foremost I'd say before the storm is to have a all hazards disaster supply kit and a plan. And we're not just talking about for hurricanes we're talking about for any kind of event that may occur, you know, Onslow county, our local area, we've seen tornadoes before. Remember the ones back in 2011 and I even will dip back just a little bit. Even in snow situations, we had a pretty massive snow storm back in 1989 which those are all things that we can reoccur here in this community again. So first and foremost is have a plan and having to supply kit ready for, you know, any kappa situation, not just the hurricanes, Aina. People will ask us where can you get a list to find out what needs to be in this supply kits not would recommend for people to go to fema.gov orientee ready.org and they would be able to find out those lists there. Now the one thing I would recommend for them to change, most of those lists will tell you to have supplies on hand for three to five days going through Florence. I will tell you, make it for a week. Go ahead and plan for seven days to make sure you've got enough food, water, and other items to be able to have on hand. Earlier this morning I was in meetings with state employee credit union, the banking system, tell them about what they can do in, one of the things we're pushing also out is for people to have actual cash on hand because you know when the power is out many transactions. Is it only way you can buy things at that point in time. So you know having money on hand would be a big thing. Also before that storm have a little bit tucked away. To be able to help you in case you need to actually buy a physical product. Cool.

Speaker 2:

During the storm, say we've got a storm, folks chose not to leave. They chose to stay here during the storm. What's a good coat? Pieces of bias?

Speaker 3:

I him, the biggest thing is being able to listen out for information coming out to you, whether it has to the national weather service coming to you from the county through alert Onslow or through our Facebook page. Any information that we're giving you to what the situation may be and how things are going to react. Uh, people have to realize, you know, when a storm Lat Florence, when you're here, you're here, the roads are gone. You're not leaving a, it's a big reason. Hm.

Speaker 2:

You had a chance to go, but, but, but you're here now,

Speaker 3:

but you're here now. And the other problem they have to realize is when those roads are flooded out like that, commodities are not able to getting in. That means the food that you need to be able to eat and stuff is not able to come in. So you need to be able to listen for the information that's coming out that will, you know, give you certain direction of what we can do. Florence, first time ever, we actually had the national guard doing air drops of food here, bringing the Mras and stuff and so we could feed some of our sheltering people that we are end up sheltering. So lots of things have you have, you know, because of Florence we did a lot of changes. We did a lot of things we've never done before in the event of after the storm. You know that's one of those times after the storm is first and foremost. Just because the rain stop doesn't mean you need to get out on the roadway. We have hundreds of people every year that will get themselves in trouble and flash floods around the United States. There's the the same turn around, don't drown. Give some times for road clear. Start making you make sure you got your preparations to get your house closed up if you've had a leak or anything. I mean Florence and this type situation, if you lost three shingles off the roof of your house, get got pressure washed for five days with 40 inches of rain and it just leaked in, in calls the mess inside out and you know one of those other pieces, it's kind of a before and after is your insurance policies. You need to know which senior insurance policy, what's is covering, how much it's covering and make sure you know what's covered in it. And there's a difference between falling water and rising water. And the same insurance policy doesn't cover to both a cover both on ones as a flood policy. And the other one is your normal home owner's insurance.

Speaker 2:

That's great information. We could keep talking about this cause I think you're just, what you just mentioned about insurance was something that a lot of folks don't. You know, they think, oh well you know I had water damage and you know, they don't, they don't realize the different sub. But listen, Greg tips. Great Advice. Thank you for coming. I told you previously before we started recording, but I'll say it again on there. I hope I don't get to see you til Christmas time. That would be great. That would be great, wouldn't it? Because I'm, I'm more contact and I hope honestly that I get to see you somewhere around December or late November and I just get to say hey to you. Well listen, next up, June 27th is National Ptsd Awareness Day and I've got command or Andrew Morton, he was a clinical psychologist and department head with intrepid spirit concussion recovery center

Speaker 4:

and he's going to be joining me to talk a little bit more about PTSD and its impact in our community specifically as it relates to our military neighbors and those who have served our country. So stay tuned.

Speaker 5:

Power. Just go out, text us and let us know. Jones Onslow is added another convenient way for reporting power outages with outage, text alerts, signing up for outage. Text alerts is simple and easy. Visit Joe[inaudible] Dot Com and click on report an outage. You'll be asked for your cell phone number and account number after responding to a verification text. That's it. You're signed up. Save the verification text phone number to your contacts on your cell phones so you can quickly report an outage if it's ever needed. Standard text and data rates may apply. One more thing to report an outage or for updates. You must be registered for the outage. Text alerts prior to the outage, your trying to report. If you register after the outage is started, you won't get alerts for that outage. Stay connected and stay informed with Jones on Slos. Outage, text alerts, sign up today.

Speaker 4:

Welcome back folks to episode two flipping the switch. So as I mentioned before, the break June is national PTSD awareness month and June 27th is National Ptsd Awareness Day. I like to welcome commander Andrew Morton with United States Navy. He's joining us today. Welcome commander born commander Morton is a clinical psychologist and department head within tripit spirit concussion recovery center. I was told I could just say intrepid spirit, but I wanted to say the full title because that is a very long and impressive title. So with that said, let's hop right into this thing. Ptsd awareness month and day commander tell us exactly what PTSD is and the typical symptoms, if there are any that might be associated with PTSD. So we like to describe it,

Speaker 6:

dramatic stress as a normal reaction to abnormal events. You've probably heard that. Um, and those events are witnessing or experiencing something very serious, usually involve death, risk of death, serious injury. Examples of that might be combat stress, sexual assault, domestic violence, gang violence. They're generally three clusters of symptoms for posttraumatic stress. First is the re experiencing of the traumatic event in some way. So that could be through nightmares, flashbacks where you feel or act as if the event is happening again, uh, intrusive memories or thoughts about the event or physical and psychological distress at cues. And what that means is if we see something in the news or hear in a conversation that reminds us of this event, then we get very nervous. We might even get jittery, we'll have physical, psychological reactions to that. The second area is avoidance of the event in some way. So avoiding thoughts or feelings about the event, avoiding those external reminders or cues that might make us think about the event. So I might find it difficult to watch a certain movie or listen to a certain conversation or I may need to avoid public places. And the third cluster of symptoms is physical arousal. So trouble sleeping, irritability, hypervigilance, hypervigilance. We mean when I go out, I need to be scanning the environment, always for signs of danger and pairing. I spent a lot of time reacting as if the chances of something awful happening are very hot, exaggerated startle response. So if somebody walks up behind me and I wasn't expecting it, having a much bigger reaction than before. My traumatic difficulty with sleep. And then of course behind that comes difficulty concentrating. So in order to have a diagnosis, you have to have a few of these symptoms from each cluster. You need to have them for more than a month. It needs to cause you distress or interfere with your functioning in some way. So since you have to have them for more than a month that says that really all these things are normal for most people following a traumatic event. And while symptom checklists like this might be helpful before you can have a diagnosis, you really need to see either a doctor or a mental health professional, only they can help you make that determination if that diagnosis is there.

Speaker 4:

Great. That's a great leading on. So let's talk a little bit about maybe one can get PTSD, but as it relates to our community right now, let's talk about intrepid spirit and let's talk about our active duty military personnel. Talk to me about intrepid spirit's mission as it relates to PTSD and our active duty service member. I know it's a concussion recovery center, so you deal with things like Tbi, traumatic brain injuries. But let's talk specifically about an intrepid Spirit's role in the act of service member and PTSD. In addition to that, talk about how many patients y'all might see a year as it relates to PTSD and if there is a typical process or procedure in being diagnosed.

Speaker 6:

So, uh, like you said, the intrepid spirit customer recovery center is mainly there to treat concussion or mild traumatic brain injury. That said, there is some overlap. You can imagine that the event that might cause a traumatic brain injury could also be a very traumatic event that results in post traumatic stress symptoms. So to differentiate the two real quick, some of the similarities you'll see between the two are low energy level of difficulty with sleep, memory, concentration, attention, some depression, anxiety, irritability. But if it's just traumatic brain injury, you're mainly going to see in addition to those symptoms, headaches, trouble with your balance, nausea, sensitivity to light, sound, vision changes. Whereas if posttraumatic stress is the main issue, then you're gonna have that being on high alert, startled easily. Like we said, fearfulness, flashbacks, maybe guilty feelings.

Speaker 4:

My parents don't mean erode you. Would it be more, am I making an assumption here? Tbrs wood or more physical type symptoms when you talking about headache, I mean that's a physical with PTSD, maybe a more emotional type symptom. I think that's a good description with a lot of overlap. Yeah, there may be some overlap but that, but that might be a good general way to scale. Okay. So we have,

Speaker 6:

I'd say about 20% of the patients we see and interim center with a traumatic brain injury also have post traumatic stress. Wow. And we see about 800 unique folks a year in interrupt.

Speaker 4:

I mean it does not surprising obviously what our service members go through and what they go through every day and what they do. So that's an amazing number. So talk about success rate in not necessarily, we will focus necessarily on PTSD. We can just talk about Tbi and PTSD, but success rate and you getting these folks back to active duty and resuming normal life, normal activities

Speaker 6:

for the past few years, 90% or higher.

Speaker 4:

Have you been to commander the whole time since that for the past couple of years and good right now. But that's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah, I've done a great job. All by yourself. Yeah, of course. With the help of loads of research advances very

Speaker 6:

courageous patients, uh, because it takes some courage to, to engage in treatment for posttraumatic stress. What the research is showing us is that successful counseling has to involve an element of exposure. And what exposure means is revisiting, thinking about, talking about that event. Now the difference between doing it on your own and doing counseling though is that in counseling you've got this professional who's caring objective. They're not there to judge you, criticize you, they're experts on feelings, thoughts, behavior. They're there just for you to work on your goals. So while the, the best therapies do include that exposure element, they're all designed to work at that person's pace. Yeah. And usually that's a smaller part of the treatment, but necessary because we need to make sure that we've gone through and all those feelings associated with the event. Let them run their natural course.

Speaker 4:

So you talked about treatment. So last question. Let's talk about someone that is not treated, someone that doesn't get diagnosed. Tell me what that looks like, what that could look like for that person, that person's family, just that sort of situation.

Speaker 6:

Well, obviously those symptoms that we talked about persisting in those effect what we can do. Um, our relationships, it might be most helpful to hear it in the words of patients who have completed successfully their therapy or treatment. So the things I get most often are I feel like I have my life back. I used to have to avoid so many things and over time my life got smaller and smaller and smaller. I couldn't talk about this. I could see these people. I couldn't go to this place. I've got that back now finally, cause I don't have to avoid those things anymore. My relationships are better because I don't feel irritable. It's much sleeping better. I can tolerate frustration better. People like being around me more. And I like being around people more than when we started and people were very happy about reduced nightmares, better sleep. And then the final thing they mentioned is they like that they don't have to be afraid of what they might think they can think about their traumatic event without getting very overwhelmed, very emotional. Whereas before it was a trigger for strong feelings each time. Now. If something reminds them of it, I think about it. It's okay. It can sit with it. They'll have a few feelings about it. Nowhere near as intense as before.

Speaker 4:

You guys do some great work and you're doing it with folks that obviously are making a difference in our country that are, that are sacrificing every day. So come on. I just want to thank you for joining us. Thank you for the great information folks. Remember June is National Ptsd awareness month or two 27th national Ptsd Awareness Day. Again, thank you for the wonderful information.

Speaker 6:

Thank you for the opportunity and I hope this was helpful for some of your listeners. Thank you, dear listeners. Hopefully they find it helpful or they can use it to help a family member or friend.

Speaker 4:

Fantastic. Thank you. Listen, after a short break, I'll be back with Erin Spencer. Aaron is Joe's on Zillow is project manager for a new technology that we're rolling out this summer, I guess metering infrastructure, Amr, pretty neat technology. We're going to be putting new electric meters on the side of your home, so stay tuned.

Speaker 7:

Hello. Hi Bob. It's head from Jones, Onslow, EMT. Hi Ed. Short for Edward. Nope, education. That makes sense. Awesome. Bobby, you probably love having your pool for the hot summer months, but I'm guessing you get all tensed up when your energy will arise and Ironic, isn't it? Well, there are a few things you can do around your home this summer to keep bills and check. Starting with regular maintenance proposed, keep the pump and strainer clean and backwash the filter according to the manufacturer's recommended specifications. Oh, and while you're outside, be sure to caulk around windows and doors, telephone lines, water spigots and dryer vents and you know that they contraption out there. Yeah, the heat pump. Don't forget to have it serviced by an authorized professional. Yeah. You know what they say about an ounce of prevention?

Speaker 4:

Well, thanks Ed. We do like saving money

Speaker 7:

and energy.

Speaker 4:

Visit G O N z.com today for useful safety tips inside and outside your home, Jones, Onslow, EMC, your local touchstone energy partner. Walking by to the final segment of flipping the switch. We're going to change gears a little bit now and talk about some pretty neat technology that Jones Oslo is rolling out to our members over the course of the next couple of years at advance metering infrastructure or Amr. So joining me is the co ops assistant vice president of engineering and our AML project manager airs fencer. Aaron, thanks for coming from down the hall. Hey man, I appreciate it. To join us to talk about the project. So let's hop right in. Advance metering infrastructure or Amr. Tell us a little bit about the technology and specifically it's been around for several years, but tell us why the co op decided to invest in it now and also give us a few benefits that the co op will experience as well as some benefits that our members, we'll see.

Speaker 8:

All right. So the technology has been around for several years and Ami Technology in itself has, and it's Kinda started with power line carrier where some information was transmitted over the power lines and now the technology has really moved to RF radio frequency technology where the meters are kind of talking to each other using RF. Joe's Oslo's waited a while and we were one of the last cops in the state to start deploying this technology. A lot of the other co op started with power line carrier and and now moving to RF solution

Speaker 4:

did we way, because we just wanted to make sure the technology was proven and cost effective for us. And what was the, what was the second?

Speaker 8:

I think the reason why you wait is you want to make sure that you're making the right decision and also the cost at the time was significantly higher than it is now. Just like with any technology, when you let it go on and mature, the cost come down, you pay a lot of times to be an early adopter. Oh that's right. You do. You do with all technology really, you can you, you pay more. Uh, we've seen it with solar technology in itself,

Speaker 4:

so we decided that it was a time to invest in it. The pricing and our business model reflected that. It was the time to move forward with it and we're moving full steam. So benefits for us.

Speaker 8:

Yeah. Well benefits for Joan's Onslow, there's some safety benefits, financial benefits that get passed down to the the member as well. One of the things that we have with an Ami solution is we have information to help us make better decisions, not only on the distribution side but on the transmission side. The big costs in issue in this industry is going to be generation. And if we can have the information to help allow either distribution and transmission resources to help reduce the need of a generating facility, that would be huge. That's a big benefit. And if we don't have to build another natural gas turban, we don't have to build another power plant.

Speaker 4:

So for us, for Jones, Oslo operational efficiencies through planning. Also you said safety. What about outages out his response? We do a pretty good job already. Our guys, when there's, when there are outages, our guys get there as quickly as possible and they get power restored as quickly as we can. But talk about how the technology will help

Speaker 8:

as it relates to outages. Right. So we're doing the pilot project. It's a 5,000 meter pilot right here in town. What we've found so far with some, like a benefit for the outage detection is a, we haven't actually been up to get the integration with the oms 100% yet. And oms is our outage management. So that's not 100% at this time. Okay. We're very close. Yeah. Um, but what we found the other day was we had a group of meters that report in an outage through our ami system during the night. Then that outage was not called in until early the next morning. So what that means is by having the information come in late in the evening, we might be able to solve the issue before a customer ever knows that they were out.

Speaker 4:

So it's going to allow us to be proactive

Speaker 8:

instead of reactive. That's right. And a lot of cases, in this case it was a commercial building, so everybody had had left[inaudible] evening. Yeah. And so that building was out then at overnight. Yeah. However, with this new technology will be able to see that outage and resolved the outage possibly before the businesses ever opened up the next morning.

Speaker 4:

Good deal. So what about for the member? What benefit will the members see with Ami? Obviously maybe potentially quicker response time for outage, restoration. What else now and potentially I know there's some things down the road, but what you know once the system gets installed, some potential immediate benefits and then down the road

Speaker 8:

as far as the member is concerned, there will be benefits in possibly being able to see their usage in a much more granulated fashion. We have the access to hourly interval data so the member will possibly be able to see the actual usage per hour instead of per month. What that can do is hopefully allow detection of faulty equipment such as heat strips that are on all the time or possibly issues with the thermostat that cause heat strips and air conditioner to run at the same time, increasing, uh, increasing your bill significantly. So you'll be able to possibly see that in days, not in months, in months. So that's a, that's a big benefit with this technology. We also have ways we can possibly do prepay meters so that it's just like putting gas in your car. The way you pay for gas in your car will be the way you'll pay for your electricity.

Speaker 4:

You know, we're not told to, people always say so electricity and I guess maybe your water are two things that you don't realize how much you've used until you get a bill at the end of the month. So you pay for everything else, groceries, you pay for this or that up front and then you use it. But like tricity and you know, and water you don't. So the prepay, which hopefully will come down the line, a member will be able to come in and Bob$75 worth of electricity and put it on a card or a punch in a code or however the, you know, the technology ends up working and bio electricity like gas.

Speaker 8:

Yeah, that's right. And one of the biggest things is, you know, with, with the way you pay for electricity right now, it's hard to really see what that bill is going to look like at this time. You know, like you said, you're getting the bill for what she used, you know,

Speaker 4:

well you got[inaudible] months after you used it at 30 days after and you have to kind of go back and say, okay, you don't remember the three weeks ago it was 98 degrees and that you had your thermostat settle maybe 68 degrees and that you just kind of churn through the electricity because it was so hot outside.

Speaker 8:

And maybe it was a summer weekend. You had a bunch of friends over, had a, had a gathering and you know, doors, a lot of people in and out. You know, there's a lot of things that, you know, we remember a week ago, but trying to put and piece it all back together with one value

Speaker 4:

30 days later, 30 days later if they come stuff. Well, so you talked about the pilot project 5,000 meters, we started last month in May and you talked about some things that we've already learned with outage management. Well first tell me how the process is going. Is the installation change out process and any other lessons that we might've learned from the process so far?

Speaker 8:

Yeah, the thing about it is the pilot's going great. We've, we've had, uh, a lot of folks that have really bought into this and, and pull a lot of work. We've created a team that has really done a great job implementing this project. We have done, according to a lot of our vendors better than they've seen most co ops at this point in time. Now we've had a few hiccups here and there. Nothing major, but we're doing everything as prescribed by Landis and gear goes, who is Arvin, who is our vendor and uh, it's working out great. It seems to me like there's, what we've learned from other co ops is that if you get a little ahead of yourself and try to do a little more than what Landis and gear prescribed, things don't work out as smooth.

Speaker 4:

I liked it. I always say with this, this is something that's going to be in place for a while. So I like to subscribe to you. It's a marathon, not a sprint. And that is going to, this technology is going to be around with us for 20 plus years at least. And that while there's a lot of bells and whistles and a lot of things that are gonna eventually be available, let's, let's get the core resource out there of being able to read meters, being able to connect and disconnect meters. We're able to do that and do some different things like that. And then as we become comfortable, and that's what Apollo a pilot projects for, is to make sure we get all the kinks work now. Right? Absolutely. Yeah. So yeah, so talking about the other meters, not gonna hold you to it, but timeline. So if everything continues to go smooth and a perfect world and we go through the pilot and we feel like, okay, it's time to the role, give our listeners a timeline for what they can expect. We will all these meters be in place and when will they be changed out and we'll be an Amr system.

Speaker 8:

All right. Our original timeline to start the full deployment was August one. We were hoping to have all the kinks worked out and feel comfortable with the system being up to bill and, and uh, work efficiently as a company with the system and in place. And that was what the pilot was supposed to prove to us. So far we've pretty much done that already. That's great. And our plan was, was to stick with an August one deployment date and take a year for full deployment. We have talked with our installation contractor, which is Elysia utility services and they had a customer that they were planning on doing some work for delay their deployment and they've asked us if there's anything we can do to keep them going. So we're gonna, we're actually going to keep these guys here. We're going to keep them pushing some meters out and get a little ahead of of full deployment. So we're, we're working on pushing the essentially starting full deployment pretty much in end of June, early July. Awesome. So this time next year, we're getting close to this time, next July

Speaker 4:

timeframe, maybe August timeframe. We hope all ami meters are set and in the field,

Speaker 8:

barring any kind of big store. Yeah. You know her, a hurricane could set us back a a month or two. Yeah. So that's obviously a possibility. Hopefully we'll, we'll dodge the bullet this year and have a quiet year and be able to get things rolling.

Speaker 4:

Awesome. Well man, great information. I appreciate you stopping by providing our listeners with a little ami 101 just so you'll know. Folks, if you want to learn more about the AML project, you can go to Joe mc.com/ami we've got a pretty neat page dedicated yeah. To The AML project. We've got a short video, we've got some frequently asked questions about Ami and we've got a informational, a little one pager where you can click on and yeah, it'll tell you when we come to your area to start changing out out the meters, what you can expect. We are notifying folks as well when we're going to be in your neighborhood, we're sending letters, were sending emails a couple of weeks in advance to give members the go to jail, emc.com/ami if you'd like more information. So well that'll do it for this episode of flipping the switch. And until next time, if you currently don't follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or any other stuff, social media channels, consider doing so, so you can keep informed about what's going on at your co op.

Hurricane Preparedness
PTSD Month
AMI Project