NEDERLAND — After hearing a 10-minute presentation on new, advanced water meter installation, Nederland Councilman Billy Neal had one question.

“Do these run any slower than the older ones did?” Neal asked, eliciting a room full of laughter.

Ron Fletcher, Entergy’s customer service manager, was quick to respond, “These will be a lot more accurate.”

Neal’s question came during this week’s City Council meeting in which Nederland leaders were brought up to the speed on Entergy’s community upgrade. (“If you have not already received one, it is coming very quickly,” Fletcher said.)

Fletcher said a 90-day notification was sent out approximately three months ago to let Nederland residents know about the installations.

“Once we get into your neighborhood, we’ll send you another notification two weeks before we actually start doing the transition of the meters,” he said. “The process should take about 15 minutes or less. We will knock on your door and let you know to prepare for a temporary loss off power that should last five minutes or less.”

If there is no one at the premises, Entergy staffers will exchange the current meter for a new meter and leave a door hanger to make the occupant aware the meter has been changed.

“If we are unable to replace the meter, a door hanger will be left behind explaining how you can reschedule your upgrade,” Fletcher said.

Once meters have been installed, Entergy will still manually read meters to make sure the remote process is working.

“Once we feel very comfortable with that, we will let you know we will stop using the manual process of reading the meters and switching over to our remote process,” Fletcher said.

Mayor Don Albanese asked where the home reading station would be and was told it was being handled out of state at a central company location.

City Manager Christopher Duque asked if smaller Nederland customers were being serviced before larger ones and was told Entergy is not sorting by size but simply moving through city section by city section.

Once installed and operational, Entergy promises numerous benefits.

• “You will no longer have to call Entergy,” Fletcher said. “We’ll know that your power is out probably before you do.”
• Entergy officials say they will have access to detailed energy usage information, leading to smarter tools.

“We will help you manage your energy use by providing reports every four to five hours about your usage in 15-minute increments,” Fletcher said. “Once that capability is available, we’ll let you know.”

• Improved communications for faster answers concerning billing.

“We’ll know your usage history and the benefits of that instead of waiting for the end of the month,” Fletcher said. “You can call us, and we can identify, for example, when there is a spike when you may have had family members visiting. We’ll be able to talk to you about that spike in usage.”

• Entergy will have the ability to read meters remotely and turn meters on and off remotely.