It's drive-by electronics

YAKIMA, Wash. --  Going the way of the milkman and doctor house calls, the familiar sight of meter readers making their way through neighborhoods will soon be a thing of the past.

Starting this month, technicians working for Pacific Power have begun replacing old analog electric meters -- the ones with the little dials and the classic spinning disc -- with automated digital meters in homes across the Yakima Valley.

Even equipped with excellent eyesight or binoculars, a reader had to be able to see the meter.

Now they just have to drive down the street. The new meters are equipped with radio transmitters that can be scanned up to a half mile away by a company vehicle driving down the street.

"It's drive-by electronics," quips Clark Satre, regional manager for Pacific Power.

The change-out got under way earlier this month and is expected to be completed by the end of the year, according to Pacific Power, which has roughly 121,000 customers in the region. Meanwhile, customers have been getting notices of the change-out in the mail.

Accuracy should improve, but the primary goal of the installations is to save on labor costs associated with meter reading, says Satre. That means fewer meter readers.

Satre says 20 of the utility's 26 meter readers in Yakima and Walla Walla are on notice that their jobs are being rapidly phased out, although the company is trying to reassign the employees through attrition.

"That's the hope, that everybody will find another job within the company," he says. "We won't know until December, but that's what we're hoping for."

The installations themselves are surprisingly quick.

After checking to see if anyone's home, an installer with Utility Partners of America removes the ring that locks in the meter, then literally pops it out of the service box and plugs the new one in.

The work can be done whether anyone is home or not -- the installer checks to see if anyone's home to be polite and to warn of the very brief power interruption.

The installer finishes up by taking a picture for reference purposes, to make sure meters match up. The process takes only a minute or two.

Thanks to its mechanical innards, the hefty old meters weigh about 5 pounds. The new digital ones weigh maybe half that. Company officials say the old meters will be recycled as much as possible before being scrapped.

Steve Broadhead, a Pacific Power manager who recently oversaw 15,000 meter change-outs in Rock Springs, Wyo., says there is a safety component to the upgrades as well.

"Dogs, snow and ice, traffic -- all the hazards of the job, this will definitely be safer for meter readers in the future," he says.

According to its website, PacifiCorp operates as Pacific Power in Oregon, Washington and California; and as Rocky Mountain Power in Utah, Wyoming and Idaho.

Balancing growing energy needs with costs and the environment is an ongoing focus for the company.

As for disruption, Broadhead says the installation is so quick and painless that most customers will never know it happened.

"If you come home and the VCR's blinking '12:00,' it could be you just got a new meter," he says.

* Chris Bristol can be reached at 509-577-7748 or cbristol@yakimaherald.com.