Two notifications popped up on my phone – “There is motion at your front door” and “Home has a new photo” – telling me that something was captured on security cameras at our front door and end of the driveway. It was about noon, so I acknowledged the notifications and assumed it was our mail carrier dropping off a delivery. Later, when I had a free moment, I checked out the video and discovered we had a stranger stop by, but I couldn’t tell what they were doing from the video. The doorbell caught a clear video of the person, and the driveway camera took a great picture of the vehicle. Has this happened to you?
As you can imagine, REA employees and our contractors go in and out of driveways many times each day. In recent years, we’ve noticed an increase in calls from members who have security cameras installed around their property that have been triggered by REA vehicles or employees. In most cases, it is difficult for office staff to know exactly where each field employee is at any given moment and what they are working on. We have automated vehicle locating installed, so there’s a general idea of those locations. But we don’t implement a system to track employees and for what purpose they might be in your driveway or at your front door.
This makes it difficult for someone in the office who has answered your phone call to explain why an REA vehicle was caught on your camera.
These are the most common reasons why we might be at your property.
Unexpected outage for maintenance, repair, or replacement of equipment – Maintenance on our system is never-ending. Although we try to do as much work as we can without interrupting your power, many tasks require that powerlines be de-energized to keep our lineworkers safe.
Meter change out — Our billing department runs a report daily identifying meters that are not reporting. Quite often, this results in a visit to the location to change the meter. As crazy as it sounds, this summer, we’ve had an unusual number of meters needing to be replaced due to ants shorting out the meter. Perhaps the damp weather has driven the insects from their nests in search of a dry new home in a meter socket.
Replacement of Demand Response Units and Aquanta units—We’re in the process of replacing load control devices across our service territory. Since the devices are mounted on the home, access to the electric panel inside the house is important to ensure the work can be completed safely by our electricians pictured below. When access is not possible, accounts may experience a brief outage to complete the work. The project was 30% complete by the end of May.
If you are concerned by a photo taken by your doorbell camera, and you suspect it may have been someone from REA, feel free to email rea@runestoneelectric.com with the picture or screenshot, and we’ll check to see if it may have been one of our employees.
Meet Our Electricians:
