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Wireless meter reading is on its way

 

Our contractor is installing wireless meter reading in your community. When we’re done, your meter reading will go to a data collector on a utility pole and straight into our billing system.

There’s no direct charge for this improvement, but you get all the benefits:

• Taking vehicles off the road (along with their fuel and maintenance costs, and their exhaust emissions) is environmentally friendly
• Greater efficiency and a refined billing process
• Cleaner transition of service when someone moves in or out

Service

During the installation process you will have no interruption in your natural gas service.

What is AMI?

For gas meters, we use two types of wireless meter reading: AMR (Advanced Meter Reading) or AMI (Advanced Metering Infrastructure). Both AMR and AMI send readings with the same type of small transmitter on the meter. For gas meters, the difference between AMR and AMI is at the receiving end.

Currently, your natural gas meter is read with an AMR data collector mounted in a company vehicle. The vehicle is driven up and down every street, past each and every meter. AMI takes those vehicles off the road (along with their fuel and maintenance costs and their exhaust emissions). How? AMI data collectors are moved from vehicles to strategically placed utility poles, either on existing poles through an agreement with electric, cable and phone companies, or on new poles we install. One data collector serves multiple meters

Benefits of using ERT meters

Wireless meter technology provides the infrastructure to integrate with our outage management system by using the wireless meters to get outage and restoration information immediately.

Plus, reducing the number of vehicles we use to read meters is environmentally friendly and reduces gasoline and maintenance costs.

• Greater Efficiency: Wireless technology allows the company to read meters more rapidly, with a transmitter on the meter and a receiver on a utility pole
   
• Customer Convenience: AMI eliminates the need for service personnel to access customers’ property monthly to read meters; indoor meters can also be read remotely
   
• Accuracy: AMI eliminates the need to estimate meter reads. If a customer’s meter is inaccessible due to location, a locked gate or a pet, the meter read can still be obtained through AMR to help ensure an accurate bill.