Chelan PUD invites customers to take charge of your power

Chelan PUD is known for asking its customers their opinion on a wide variety of issues and new electric meters is no different. Even though the PUD already has some 16,000 digital, one-way meters that allow meter readers to “drive by” and do meter reads, the utility wants to take technology one step farther.

“Right now, the meter reading process is manual,” says John Stoll, managing director of customer utilities. “It means that we have to send an employee out and gather the meter data every month. Sometimes that means going onto a customer’s property to do the meter read. About half of our electric residential meters do allow meter readers to collect that information somewhat remotely – from their car or truck. With the new, two-way digital meters, the meter would “ping” the utility with that data daily – no more driving that involves time and even means adding auto emissions into the air.”

The new two-way, digital meters, also known as advance or automated meters are part of Chelan PUD’s efforts to invest in technologies that improve the efficiency of employees and provide greater convenience and options for customers. In the long run, the utility estimates that there will be substantial cost savings for the PUD through remote, automated data collection that provides real-time meter reads that are accurate and don’t require a person onsite to do the reading.

For customers, it means that they can follow their energy use daily and make adjustments to keep their energy bills low. And, like many other utility services customers already have, they will be able to manage their electric utility account from their computer or mobile device – setting up their own “dashboard” that manages their energy consumption.

The technology isn’t new. Automated or advanced two-way digital metering infrastructure or AMI, is in about 40 percent of the households nationwide. More than 50 million digital meters have been installed. In fact, the PUD has 16,000 electric and 6,500 one-way digital water meters that have been installed since the 1990s.

The timing is right to look at AMI. The PUD is replacing its current Customer Information System (CIS) during the next two years and adding in AMI is a logical next investment. AMI gives customers a number of benefits:

· Personalized energy alerts

· New customer toolkits such as web portals and phone apps

· More accurate meter reading and billing

· Better reliability, accuracy of data and more utility operating efficiency, saving time and money

· Reduced carbon footprint

· Faster outage detection and restoration

Chelan PUD customers will have an opportunity to take a look at the new meters and to ask questions about the technology during a series of community events taking place around Chelan County during the month of April. Here is a schedule of events:

Sat. April 8 – 9 a.m. Lake Wenatchee Recreation Center, 14400 Chiwawa Loop Road

Sat. April 8 – 11 a.m. Beaver Valley Lodge, 18630 Beaver Valley Road, Plain

Wed. April 12 – 6:30 p.m. Leavenworth Fire Hall, 228 Chumstick Highway, Leavenworth

For more information and to leave the PUD a comment, please visit: chelanpud.org/AdvancedMeters.

The PUD Commission will be looking at whether or not to move forward with AMI sometime in May.