Spire is installing new ‘smart meters’ around KC. Will the tech affect your gas bill?

If you’ve noticed a brand new natural gas meter on the outside of your house or apartment building, you aren’t alone. Spire, the natural gas company serving the Missouri side of the Kansas City area, is installing “smart meters” at residences around the region — sometimes without warning.

“Right now in what we call Missouri West, and that includes Joplin and St. Joseph (alongside Kansas City), we have installed 134,000 ultrasonic meters,” said Jim Rieske, the director of measurement for Spire Missouri. “That’s roughly 30%.”

These meters are either installed while the company is doing other service work on a property, or by technicians sent out specifically to replace outdated meters with new ones.

Spire says the new meters are less likely to break, deliver gas usage information faster and more accurately and include safety features that the older meters lack. But some critics say the company is replacing perfectly good meters with new ones, driving costs up for customers without their consent. That’s because Spire collects profit from its infrastructure upgrades by raising rates to cover the cost of new technology.

“We don’t think it’s necessarily cost effective to include those components,” said John Clizer, a lawyer with the Office of Public Counsel, which represents Missouri natural gas customers, before the state regulatory board in a hearing this fall. “Our office has been opposed to AMI deployments,” he added, referring to Advanced Metering Infrastructure or ‘smart meters.’

What is a ‘smart meter’?

This new type of meter uses ultrasonic frequencies to measure the amount of natural gas flowing through it. That’s an update from the old technology that many homes still have around the city, which have internal moving parts that the company says can break more easily.

The new meters also have added safety mechanisms that cause them to shut off automatically when they detect a significant leak or a house fire.

They also have the ability to connect to a network, allowing them to send gas usage information directly to Spire using cellular data. However, this capability hasn’t been rolled out yet. For now, the new meters still transmit usage information through radio signals to Spire trucks that drive through your neighborhood.

Why is Spire installing new meters?

Spire Missouri’s vice president of regulatory and government affairs Scott Weitzel noted at a public hearing last fall that its smart meters reflect a shift in the available technology for measuring natural gas usage.

“The industry is moving towards more smart meters,” he said. “We’re always being forced to buy these meters because they’ve stopped making the old meters.”

Rieske explained that the meters’ ability to detect changes in pressure and ambient temperature can help avoid catastrophe.

“It recognizes the gas that’s passing through the meter, and it has programmed thresholds that say if the flow of gas exceeds what we reasonably expect should be going through the meter, it has an auto shutoff,” he told The Star.

Some critics have argued that the company is replacing functional meters before the end of their lifetimes so that it can further raise rates on customers to recoup the cost of new smart meters.

Some Kansas City residents have also raised concerns about the data these meters collect — both to Spire and to regulators at a public hearing in October.

“Some people are not comfortable with the more advanced metering technology,” Spire lawyer Matt Aplington said in the fall hearing. “We created… a new tariff provision that allows customers to opt out if they would like to.”

What information do these meters collect?

Rieske told The Star that the new meters collect and transmit data no differently than the older ones — they just do so faster and more accurately.

“What we’re doing right now is getting daily reads,” he said. “The ultrasonic meters store the data hourly. So when we (connect them) to a network, we’re going to be able to see the patterns hourly, which will give us even greater insight.”

He added that this more granular data about natural gas usage could help customers conserve energy, even lowering their bills.

Also changing is the way meters will be read. For now, the new meters transmit usage data to Spire trucks using a radio frequency system — that’s similar to how the older meters work. But Rieske told The Star that eventually these new meters will be able to transmit cellular data directly to Spire’s headquarters, no trucks required.

This cellular transmission will give customers a quicker way to see their own data usage — but will also allow Spire to shut your gas off remotely, without sending a technician to your home.

“Either you have to opt out, or allow us to install the new technology,” Rieske said. “The equipment that’s on the new ultrasonic meter is no more intrusive than the technology we have out there today.”

How will the new meters affect natural gas bills?

Spire does not charge individual customers for replacing their old meter with a new one. However, the company makes its profits off the new infrastructure it installs: that’s the “Delivery Charge” portion of your bill.

This means that all customers will see their delivery rates increase over time as the company continues to invest in this new technology — but we don’t yet know by how much.

The new meters don’t change the way your gas use is reported or charged on your bill — they just provide more data to your online account. For this reason, Rieske says that most customers don’t notice any difference in their bill’s format or charges when a smart meter is installed on their home.

Can Spire customers opt out of the new technology?

Yes, but opting out of Spire’s meter replacements and keeping the old technology will cost you.

Customers who choose to opt out of the program after the “initial standard meter installation” will have to pay a $100 set-up charge for a new meter that doesn’t include the new technology. They will then be required to pay an additional $30 per month on top of their normal bill for a meter-reader to visit their home and record their natural gas usage.

“When we talk about opting out, customers are opting out of having that radio frequency device, so it has no way to broadcast the signal,” Rieske said. “We’re giving them a mechanical meter with an index, and someone has to go physically read it. That’s what opt out means.”

He added that only “a couple dozen” customers have chosen to opt out and absorb the cost of an older meter with no data transmission technology.

While many homes around the metro currently have older meters with radio frequency technology, he added that this isn’t an option moving forward: You can either get a smart meter, or pay for an old meter without modern transmission capabilities.

When is my installation window?

There isn’t a particular period of time in which Spire plans to replace all the meters in the city — it does so when it’s most convenient and when current meters appear to be operating poorly. That means your installation may have already happened without your noticing.

“If we can do it without interrupting the customers, so they don’t need to be there, we would schedule it and we would leave a door hanger when we’re there,” Rieske said.

Do you have more questions about utilities in Kansas City? Ask the Service Journalism team at kcq@kcstar.com.