(Estherville)– Significant improvements are in the works for the electrical department in the city of Estherville and its distribution system. The city council Monday approved an agreement with Tantalus, Incorporated for a grid management, monitoring and control project. $1.4 million of the $1.8 million project will be paid for through a grant.
City Administrator Penny Clayton says the project will increase reliability and resiliency, while also providing some efficiencies in operations, including a remote meter reading system…
“The idea here would be that we will replace all of the electric meters in town with the smart meters. That system actually is the only one that will also read our water meters. So we’ll have the efficiency factor in there that none of the other vendors could provide to us.”
She says the system will also give more timely notification and information on outages as well as to possibly establish a time-of-day rate system sometime in the future.
