Transitioning to advanced meters is a bit like upgrading to a smart phone from a land line phone—both technologies work, but the smart phone allows customers to stay even more connected to what matters to them.
Current meters
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Are manually read by meter readers every month, creating opportunities for billing errors and estimations.
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Require meter readers to drive more than 200,000 miles annually to record customer data. This creates vehicle fuel costs and produces pollution from vehicle trips.
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Cannot alert the utility to power outages (Chelan PUD currently relies on customer phone calls to know when the power is out).
Advanced meters
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Use secure wireless communications to send energy-use information directly to us.
- Alert us to power outages, enabling a faster outage response.
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Create more reliable customer billing. Advanced Metering reduces several manual processes, helping to ensure meters are read correctly and customers are billed accurately every time.
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Provide added safety features like sensors that can detect increasing temperatures. This allows the utility to alert customer of pending failures of customer equipment.
- In the future, will enable customers to view their energy-use information daily. This can empower you to make energy- and money- saving choices.