ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, August 29, 1996 TAG: 9608290048
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
Don't rub your eyes. That really was an American Electric Power Co. worker reading your Roanoke Gas Co. meter.
And, if you live in certain Southwest Roanoke County neighborhoods you may have seen an AEP worker reading your county water meter this summer, as well.
AEP, Roanoke Gas and the county have begun looking for ways to perform certain jobs more efficiently by doing the work together.
For Roanoke Valley residents it means they may one day receive electric, gas and water bills in one envelope and be able to pay for all three with one check, AEP said Wednesday. But when the cooperative effort begins this fall, it will consist of two, joint meter-reading projects.
On Oct. 1, AEP workers will begin reading the meters of all 45,000 Roanoke Gas customers in the Roanoke Valley. Art Pendleton, Roanoke Gas' vice president for operations, said the utility's contract with AEP should save his company 30 percent annually on meter-reading costs.
In a separate but related project, AEP will begin reading electric, gas and water meters this fall at 300 homes in the Penn Forest and Hunting Hills neighborhoods in Roanoke County. Electronic devices installed in utility meters at those houses will transmit meter readings over a wireless system back to AEP's main office in Roanoke.
Planning between Roanoke County and AEP begun last January and evolved into the electronic meter-reading pilot program. Equipment for the program should be in place within six weeks.
Later this fall the company will decide whether to expand the program to other parts of the Roanoke Valley and elsewhere in AEP's seven-state service area, said Tom Jobes, director of a new AEP unit in Columbus, Ohio, that is charged with finding new lines of business for the power company.
If the program proves workable, county residents could look forward to having their meters read once a month rather than quarterly as is now the practice, said Diane Hyatt, the county's director of finance. By cooperating with AEP on the new technology, the county may have opportunities it couldn't afford on its own, Hyatt said.
Besides joint meter reading and billing, the three utilities might cooperate someday on mapping and the installation of utilities, Jobes said. For example, underground utilities for new subdivisions might all be installed in the same trench in the future, he said.
Utility officials said the ability of the automated system to read meters any time of the day or night could provide advantages that haven't even been thought of yet. Such a system, for example, could help the gas and water services detect leaks and the power company track outages to precise homes or businesses.
AEP will begin reading Roanoke Gas meters in October using the same hand-held devices it currently uses to read its own meters. But the next step before installation of a fully automated system might involve an AEP worker driving down a street and reading radio-equipped meters remotely. A drive-by system can read as many as 15,000 accounts in a day, Jobes said.
Roanoke Gas already uses a drive-by system for 5,000 customers in the Bluefield, W.Va., area, Pendleton said. However, Roanoke Gas decided to contract with an outside company for meter reading in the Roanoke Valley, and AEP offered the winning bid for the work, he said.
The eight people the gas company now has reading meters will be assigned to other work. None will lose their jobs, Pendleton said. The county's three meter readers would be assigned to other work should the automated program be expanded countywide, Hyatt said.
AEP employs 19 meter readers in its 105,000-customer Roanoke division, but they are initially expected to have more work rather than less because of the Roanoke Gas contract and because the fully automated system will be phased in gradually, AEP officials said.
Barry Snodgrass, manager of AEP's Central Virginia region, said the new system should "generate some dollars we can re-invest in our company and keep our rates at a nice low level."
Although Roanoke County will provide the first electronic meter reading site on AEP's system, Itron, the Spokane, Wash., company that makes the equipment for the pilot program has already sold its technology to other cities. The Baltimore (Md.) Gas & Electric Co. is currently installing 500,000 of the automated meters, Jobes said.
The cost of equipping a meter with a radio is about $50. But the total cost of a fully automated system will be determined by the pilot program, Jobes said.
LENGTH: Medium: 82 linesby CNB