$13M project paused in Richland after soaring electric and water bills
Richland is promising to make good after a chaotic roll-out of new utility meters led to wildly inflated power and water bills.
The $13 million project, which affects both electric meters and water meters, was halted Feb. 13 as hundreds of residents complained that their bills doubled or even tripled. And the city’s daily number of customer complaints doubled to 300.
While the city is prepared to correct errors, residents can expect more unwelcome surprises since the current billing cycle continues through March.
The city stopped the project, which swaps mechanical meters with digital ones, while it assessed the problem.
Now, officials say they have a better grasp of the situation. Unusually cold weather in November and December and technical issues with the flow of data into the billing system led it to estimate the use for too many customers.
Also, the digital meters are replacing aging mechanical ones that didn’t fully register the actual water and power being used by households.
The new ones are more accurate, translating into higher costs.
Customer concerns
One customer complained on the city’s Facebook page that a bill went over $300, when it was normally under $100.
Another expected a lower bill with fewer people in the house, but got a bigger one. Many complained they couldn’t get an explanation when they called the city.
“This is a very complex project that hasn’t been without its challenges,” Joe Schiessl, the city’s deputy manager, told the city council during the Feb. 21 regular meeting.
The city contracted with Spokane-based Itron Inc. in May 2020 to replace 49,000 water and power meters after a pilot project involving fewer than 1,000 meter installations.
Other cities
The utility billing issue is confined to Richland as most of its neighbors have already embraced advanced meters for power customers.
The Benton Public Utility District installed advanced meters between 2009 and 2012.
Franklin PUD has replaced all but 2,400 meters.
And the Benton Rural Electrical Association is conducting a pilot study for advanced meters, but currently uses mechanical ones, said Troy Berglund, general manager.
In Richland, 90% of power meters and 51% of water meters were been replaced before the temporary halt in work. About 3,000 mostly commercial meters are left to be installed. The process should wrap up this fall.
The council, stung by being called “crooks,” sought assurance from city staff that mistakes will be fixed, lessons learned and that the city will aggressively share what it knows with the public.
The task had fallen to the city’s utility workers, who weren’t prepared to field questions about what went wrong.
“This was a miss on our part,” said Councilwoman Sandra Kent, who said her own utility bill was unexpectedly high during this week’s public session.
Sometimes the errors went in the opposite direction. Councilman Ryan Lukson said his bill was too low and he’d worried about being billed later for the balance.
City Manager Jon Amundson said he will send a letter to Richland residents acknowledging the problem and explaining the steps the city is taking to adapt to its new meters and correct billing mistakes.
Digital meters
Richland, unique in the Tri-Cities, provides electric services to its 62,000 residents and businesses.
Like its neighbors, it also provides water and sewer services.
Customers are charged based on what they use, as measured by meters. The old meters were mechanical and had to be read by meter readers armed with handheld scanners. It is a cumbersome process and even intrusive.
Schiessl said Richland retains an inconvenient relic of its government town history: Utility meters in backyards of thousands of the city’s original homes.
For decades, meter readers had to walk into backyards, braving dogs and startling residents in private spaces.
The digital replacements transmit data to area nodes several times a day. The data feeds into the cloud, where it is accessed for billing purposes.
Eventually, it will support customer-facing technology that will let Richland residents see how much power and water they use down to 30-minute intervals.
The new meters have a 20-year lifespan and eliminate the need for meter readers and their handheld devices.
Cold weather
Schiessl blamed the billing problems on the cold weather in late 2022, which drove up power use, and on the need to estimate customer demand when actual data wasn’t available. during the mechanical-to-digital transition.
That happened either because an old mechanical meter was still in use or because the digital transmission system sent incomplete data until it was corrected.
Faced with missing data, the city estimated what people were using.
For example, if February 2023 data was missing, it used February 2022 as a guide.
“We had too much estimating,” he acknowledged. The goal is 100% accurate digital readings.
Schiessl pledged to do what it takes to restore trust. That includes removing new meters, retesting them for accuracy and providing skeptical customers with the documented results.
While Richland said it is committed to accurate meters and correcting billing issues, there are steps utility customers can take to tame bills.
That includes signing up for equalized payments, signing up for a payment plan and considering weatherizing properties to save on water and power.
The city devoted a section of its website to discussing the Advanced Metering Infrastructure project. It can be accessed from www.ci.richland.wa.us/
This story was originally published February 24, 2023 at 5:00 AM.