Environmental Stewardship
Energy News
In the future, customers will be able to monitor their energy use and make adjustments to conserve electricity.
Smarter than the average meter
Chelan County PUD is developing a pilot project to test “smart” meters that may eventually help customers decide how and when to use electricity.
These meters will be read automatically. Customers will benefit from less intrusion on their property, and reduced emissions from trucks now on the road to read about 45,000 meters each month manually. In addition, the system should provide enhanced outage detection throughout Chelan County.
Information about electric use will be more readily available, so customers can monitor and make choices about when and how to conserve.
Planning has just begun, so no decisions have been made on how the PUD’s pilot project will work. John Stoll, Customer Services director, said many options are available to read meters automatically. "The initial effort of this project will be to evaluate those options and find the best fit for the PUD service territory," he said.
“This is a big project,” said Stoll, “…but it certainly opens the door for a lot of efficiency. It’s a project where every customer will see a benefit.”
Nationally, utilities are beginning to use so-called smart systems to adjust electricity use when supplies are tight or when system reliability is a concern.
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