HILTON, N.Y. – RG&E is now about 75% of the way done when it comes to switching over all of the homes and businesses in our region to smart meters. If your neighborhood hasn’t seen a crew yet, you likely will very soon.   

On Monday, the CEO of RG&E met News10NBC in a Hilton neighborhood where installations were taking place to talk about what the switch to smart meters means for customers.

“If you have a smart meter you’re being billed based on your actual use, you’re not worrying about a customer read or a company read every other month, a read that you may have transposed a digit…it’s accurate reads, accurate bills,” says Trish Nilsen, CEO of RG&E/NYSEG.

There should no longer be the chance of a huge surprise when you open your bill.  While rates will always fluctuate, months won’t go by before you have an actual meter reading.

RG&E and NYSEG have now installed one million new smart meters across the state, “If you have our app or an online account, there’s the energy manager tool and you’re able to see if your smart meter is actually sending data right on that tool. I can look at my energy use by the hour, so I literally can see what it means if we turn on all the lights in the house and if we turn them off,” Nilsen says. 

Tim Dean got new meters on Monday, he tells News10NBC he probably won’t monitor his usage constantly but, “if I see a deviation in my bill like I’m sure in the summer time when the pool pump is running more and in the winter when the furnace is running more I’m going to want to look at it and see.”

Only about 5% of customers so far have opted out of having their meters switched. “If you choose to opt out and not have it installed, you will have a charge on your bill because it represents a separate billing system interface that we have to maintain and the cost of actually getting those reads so, it’s about a $13 charge a month,” Nilsen explains.

The utilities have yet to begin charging customers who opt-out but will begin doing so, soon,  “we’re not charging yet, we’re actually trying to give people a chance to make that appointment, we’re reaching out to any customer who had not yet let us inside to do an install or if there’s an issue with us scheduling an install, we’re giving them time to do that,” Nilsen says. 

During every installation, an employee takes a picture of a customer’s old meter and the new one to ensure accuracy during the change-over but if you question it after getting your first bill or have any issues, Nilsen says to reach out.

“If a customer is concerned about the amount of their bill, they should reach out to us and obviously with any higher than normal bill, we’ll offer a customer a payment plan, we’ll let them pay on their schedule and we’ll balance those out,” she says.

For more information about Smart Meters and a schedule for when installation will happen in your neighborhood, click here.

To access the Energy Manager tool, sign into your account here.

*A.I. assisted with the formatting of this story. Click here to see how WHEC News 10 uses A.I.*