The Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority is accelerating its long-awaited smart meter replacement project, a move Chief Executive Officer Karl Knight says is aimed squarely at one of customers’ biggest frustrations: billing.
WAPA’s governing board voted last week to deploy new electric meters on St. Thomas and St. Croix concurrently — shaving six months off the overall timeline. Installation on St. John is expected to begin later this year, with testing and calibration to follow before full deployment territorywide.
In an interview this week, Knight said the original schedule called for completing St. Thomas first, then remobilizing crews to St. Croix for another six-month installation period. Instead, both districts will now move forward at the same time.
“That saves us six months on the back end,” Knight explained, adding that the authority will double installation crews and expand warehousing, networking infrastructure and support resources to meet the compressed timeline.
Knight framed the acceleration as a customer relief measure.
The new system will allow meters to be read remotely using updated technology — replacing infrastructure first deployed roughly 15 years ago. According to Knight, the advanced metering infrastructure will flag anomalies before bills are issued, reducing estimated billing and catching irregular readings earlier in the process.
“It changes a lot of the issues that we’re having with billing,” Knight said, noting that the system allows WAPA to verify questionable reads before customers receive large or unexpected invoices.
The new meters are expected to improve billing accuracy, reduce estimated bills, detect outages faster, and provide customers with greater visibility into their energy usage.
Billing complaints have been a recurring issue in Public Services Commission hearings over the years, even more so during the past year, as questions about how estimations work and are addressed.
The board also approved a cost increase for the Feeder 5A underground electrical project on St. Thomas. While Knight did not have updated cost figures available during the interview, he said the undergrounding effort is far from complete territorywide.
On St. Thomas, underground lines extend from Red Hook toward Raphune Hill, with additional work planned. On St. Croix, projects run from Christiansted through the North Shore toward La Grange and into Frederiksted.
“We are nowhere near done with underground,” Knight said. “We’re almost done with composite poles, but we’re just really getting going with the underground work.”
Underground infrastructure is intended to reduce storm-related outages and improve grid resilience.
In another board action, WAPA approved a 10-year lease at Four Winds Plaza that will consolidate customer-facing operations into one location.
The agreement reduces projected costs from more than $12 million under current arrangements to approximately $8.16 million over the lease term, resulting in an estimated $3 million to $5 million in savings.
Knight confirmed the authority plans to relocate its customer service operations from Port of Sale later this year, the final timeline and date of which will be announced beforehand. Originally considering only a portion of the former supermarket space, WAPA opted to lease the full area to house customer accounts, key accounts, meter services and other operations under one roof.
He said consolidation is intended to eliminate fragmentation and duplicated overhead while improving workflow.
Asked separately about current global fuel market volatility and potential ripple effects on local electricity costs, Knight acknowledged the risk but said WAPA does not plan to seek rate increases at this time.
Fuel price shocks — including those triggered by international conflicts — have historically strained the authority’s finances. However, Knight said WAPA is less dependent on diesel than in the past and relies primarily on liquefied petroleum gas, with an increasing share of solar generation.
At one point last year, he said, both districts operated fully on LPG, insulating the system from diesel fluctuations. Solar generation, particularly on St. Croix, provides more predictable pricing and reduces exposure to imported fuel volatility.
“I don’t plan to [ask for increases] unless it really gets out of hand and I have no other choice,” Knight said. “We’re going to fight to make sure the rates don’t increase.”
Instead, he said, the authority is focusing on operational efficiencies to absorb rising costs where possible.
The CEO’s report also referenced vegetation management expansion, corrective measures following a recent 24-hour outage on St. John tied to automation coordination issues, and new contracts for traveling screens to mitigate sargassum impacts on generation facilities.
