Westar Energy Upgrades to North Central Kansas Areas
Westar Energy, Inc. is preparing to make a significant
capital investment in the communities of Junction City, Manhattan and the
surrounding areas by upgrading our electric metering system. We are excited to
embark on this $10 million dollar upgrade to provide improved customer service,
quicker service delivery and improved outage management all while increasing
internal operational efficiencies within Westar.
The digital upgrade, known as AMI (Automated Metering
Infrastructure), will provide numerous benefits to the customer. The first and
the most impactful being the customer’s ability to view their energy costs and
usage in a more granular fashion from the online energy dashboard. The new
Energy Dashboard provides customers an opportunity to understand their
electrical consumption, costs and value. Customers can set up budget alerts,
receive usage spike alerts and they receive weekly and monthly email snapshots
of their costs and usage. This is helpful information for customers to
understand how their habits and behaviors can have on their consumption.
The digital upgrade allows Westar to read the meter
remotely, eliminating the need to be physically close to the meter and on the
customer’s property. The upgrade also allows for remote service orders like a
connection or disconnection which can be done without sending one of our
service person out to complete.
Our timeline for the capital investment upgrade has begun
with the installation of network communication equipment. Customers may see
Westar trucks in their neighborhoods installing the wireless communication
devices called routers and collectors. This is the backbone structure for how
the meters will communicate to Westar. The network is a secure, encrypted
private wireless network.
Once the network equipment has been installed, we will begin
the meter exchanges. Our installers will exchange every meter in an area by
first knocking on the customer’s door to let them know they could experience a
brief loss of power while the meter upgrade is taking place. They will provide each
customer with an informational door hanger regarding the Energy Dashboard. If
no one is home and we have access to the meter, we will perform the exchange,
leaving behind the door hanger. All customer types will be upgraded to the new
metering system, including our commercial customers. The Energy Dashboard is
available to all customers through a secure account on our website.
We are very excited about the enhancements and investment we
are making in your area. We hope you are too and will help us educate the
community about the upgrade. Please feel free to visit our website for more
information (https://www.westarenergy.com/Portals/0/Resources/Documents/PDFs/AMI_Summary.pdf)
or contact Justin Campbell (785-587-2314 – Manhattan) directly with any further
questions.
Warmest regards,
Westar AMI Team
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