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Board asks staff for proposal to meter street lights to better measure consumption and address line losses
Summary
A board member asked staff to prepare a cost‑benefit proposal to meter the city’s street lights after discussion about unmetered consumption contributing to roughly 10% line losses; staff said the MPOA currently pays about $2,300 monthly for street lights.
During board requests the chair asked staff to prepare a proposal to meter all street lights so the utility can measure consumption and better account for line losses.
“ I would like to see a proposal to meter all the street lights,” the Chair (Speaker 1) said, explaining that metering would allow the board to quantify consumption now treated as line loss and could inform discussions with city council about who should pay street-light costs.
Another Committee member (Speaker 5) raised cost concerns: “Wouldn't that be terribly expensive to set metering up on the different streetlight systems?” Staff said the technology exists as part of advanced metering infrastructure (vendor referenced as Landis and Gear) but that the board had prioritized phase 1 deployment for residential and commercial accounts first.
Staff reported that the MPOA currently pays roughly $2,300 per month for street lights and that unmetered street lights are included in the utility’s line-loss calculations. The City manager (Speaker 6) noted line loss is “about 10%, roughly,” and that metering data would help clarify the utility’s loss accounting.
Board members asked staff to return with a cost-benefit analysis and an implementation plan for possible phased metering of area lights.
