ComEd's AMI smart meter rollout in suburban Chicago has created a wave of billing errors for my clients. Three different accounts have had issues in the past 6 months — one had the meter multiplier reset to 1 instead of 40 (bills dropped to almost nothing for two months before the catch-up), another had the demand register stop communicating (estimated demand for 4 months straight), and the third had their meter ID swapped with a neighboring business during the installation. Anyone else seeing AMI rollout problems?
AMI meter rollout caused billing chaos
Yes — I've seen similar issues with Ameren's AMI rollout downstate. The most common problem is the multiplier getting reset during the meter swap. When the old CT-metered setup gets replaced with a new AMI meter, the installer sometimes programs the wrong multiplier into the new meter. It's a data entry error during installation. Always compare the first bill after a meter swap to the trend of prior bills. If usage or demand looks dramatically different, the multiplier is the first thing to check.
AMI rollouts are an audit goldmine if you know what to look for. Every mass meter replacement creates a wave of programming errors — wrong multipliers, wrong meter IDs, wrong rate codes, failed communications resulting in estimated bills. I recommend checking every client that has had a meter swap in the past 12 months. Compare pre-swap and post-swap billing patterns. Any significant change in usage, demand, or total charges that isn't explained by an operational change is potentially a rollout error.
Going to run a query of all my clients' bills looking for meter swap dates and post-swap anomalies. If the error rate is as high as it seems, this could be a very productive exercise.