By Bethany Hooper

Associate Editor

The Berlin Town Council this week awarded a $893,000 contract to install advanced electric meters.

In June, the Town of Berlin issued a request for proposals from vendors to design, supply, install and implement Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). And on Monday, Electric Utilities Director Tim Lawrence came back before the council with a recommendation to award the RFP to NexGrid, one of seven vendors to bid on the project. The town’s electric utility consultant reviewed the bids and chose NexGrid as the best fit.

“Our first choice would be NexGrid,” he said. “NexGrid has the lowest recurring cost.”

The contract, Lawrence said, totaled $893,339, which included a 20-year prorated warranty. Additionally, the town would incur an annual cost of $18,456 for maintenance and professional services fees once the electric metering system is deployed.

“That’s basically for hosting the system on the cloud,” he said. “Also for technical support, software updates, and that type of thing.”

Similar to a smart water meter project the town completed last year, the advanced electric metering project will allow the town to record energy consumption and collect data in real time, meaning that electric meters will no longer need to be read manually. Lawrence said the new AMI system would also benefit users, as they will be able to access a portal that tracks their power consumption.

“For example, when their air conditioning kicks on or their heater kicks on, they can actually see their power consumption rise,” he said. “So they could actually sit at home and tweak their electric system themselves, to reduce the current consumption.”

Lawrence added that the AMI system would give the department the capability to monitor outages and power usage. He said it also utilizes temperature sensing, which alerts the department of any fire hazards.

“So there are several bells and whistles that come with this system,” he said, “very elaborate and very detailed so there’s a lot that we can do with it.”

A report from Booth & Associates, the town’s consultant, shows the town received seven bids, which ranged from $500,000 to $1.2 million. However, Lawrence noted that not all vendors met the town’s requirements, including outage detection, advanced safety features and more.

While not the lowest bid, Lawrence said NexGrid included a 20-year warranty valued at $130,800. He said the company was also highly rated by municipalities that had contracted with NexGrid.

Following Lawrence’s presentation, the town council voted 5-0 to award the RFP to NexGrid. The project, officials noted, would be funded through a bond.

“This will do two things,” Council Vice President Dean Burrell said. “It will assist our electric department to operate more effectively and efficiently, and it will provide the customer information at a moment’s notice as to how they can monitor the uses of their electricity, which serves us all a lot better.”