Duke plans to use power lines instead of radio transmissions to carry the metered information

Meter reading gets high-tech
Radio transmitters revolutionize how water company reads your meter
BY MARGARET A. MCGURK | ENQUIRER STAFF WRITER


Bill Adelhardt worked the same job for 16 years before technology took it away.

He's a little wistful about that.

"I miss the walking," said the former water-meter reader. "You were getting exercise and getting paid at the same time, so it was nice."


Adelhardt, of Bridgetown, is still employed by Greater Cincinnati Water Works, but now he drives a van as a field services representative.

His old job is done by a low-frequency radio transmitter sending meter readings to a truck that cruises the streets, scooping up as much information in one hour as 20 people used to collect in a day.

The $38 million project to shift GCWW customers to automated readings is more than half-finished. Some 170,000 transmitters are in place, and another 50,000 will be installed by the end of 2007, said GCWW assistant superintendent Alison Posinski, manager of "H2O Radio."

As the work progresses, notes and phone calls go out to individual account-holders asking for appointments to install the new devices. The switch has been remarkably easy, Posinski said, because customers cooperate.

"Cincinnati is wonderfully unique," she said. "We are a big small town. We have got 90 percent cooperation just by asking." Other cities have run into problems getting into as many buildings, she said. "Here in Cincinnati, people are very trusting. We have had great customer acceptance."

Other cities, including Chicago and Louisville, have sent delegates here to see how the switch works. One common question they raise is how Cincinnati handled employees whose jobs were disappearing.

"We didn't want to lay off any full-time employees, and we won't," she said.

Instead, the agency started offering promotions and training for new jobs in 2001, before the installation project began. GCWW employed 24 full-time meter readers in 2001; today, there are five, plus a few temporary summer workers.

Remote meter-reading for gas and electric is on the horizon, said Steve Brash, spokesman for Duke Energy.

The company is awaiting the Kentucky Public Service Commission's approval of a three-year plan to automate readings for 132,000 electric customers and 94,000 gas customers in Northern Kentucky. Duke's territory includes most of Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties and parts of Gallatin, Grant and Pendleton counties.

Duke plans to use power lines instead of radio transmissions to carry the metered information, Brash said. He pointed out that the company's research into delivering broadband Internet service over power lines uses a separate technology.

Brash said that if approval is granted, as expected, by the end of this year, about 40,000 electric meters and 28,000 gas meters would be replaced during 2007. The project will cost about $24 million to complete and should save $34 million through 2020, he said.

Ohio's 814,000 electric and 516,000 gas customers probably will have to wait three or four years until the Kentucky project is over, he said, so Duke can be sure the technology works properly and saves as much as expected.

The automated systems mean fewer missed readings and an end to estimates.

For many, it also means an end to a familiar social routine.

"It was a job I really liked a lot," Adelhardt said. "You get to know people on your route, people become friends to you, they know when you're coming, ask about your family. You miss all that.

"I think it's mostly the senior citizens that miss us more than anybody. They look forward to it. But for the working people, this system works out better."


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