Smart Meters Are Coming Downtown

As part of its smart grid initiative, CenterPoint Energy has been replacing standard electric meters with new digital “smart meters” since March, 2009. Beginning in April, CenterPoint and its installation contractors will be installing smart meters in the downtown district. This activity will affect numerous buildings that have retail tenants in ground floor or basement areas who have meters separate from the base building meters and who pay their own electric bills. Depending on the type of meter, brief tenant outages of three to five minutes will be required to make the replacements. The base building electric services will not be affected.

Smart meters represent a quantum leap forward in the advancement of electric industry technology and offer numerous benefits to both the utility and its consumers. Meters will be read remotely, alleviating the need for meter readers in your buildings, service outages will be automatically reported, hastening restoration efforts, and consumers will be able to more accurately monitor and control their electricity demand and usage via the internet at www.SmartMeterTexas.com.

A CenterPoint or contractor representative will be contacting you in the near future to schedule these meter replacements. For more information on CenterPoint Energy smart meters, visit www.CenterPointEnergy.com/EnergyInSight.