Regarding the letter, “Monthly PUD billing costly, unnecessary”: The writer was wrong when he wrote about PUD’s use of electronic reading meters not saving money.
I worked in IT at a gas/electric utility at the time they switched to electronic reading meters. First of all, they don’t just read the meter once a month for billing purposes. The meter is being read constantly and sends data back to the main computer. When a meter shows zero consumption it’s not a big deal, but when hundreds or thousands of meters suddenly show no consumption then that is a problem. The computer shows where and the extent of an outage. This allows dispatch to send out the proper personnel to rectify the situation and in turn saves money. It also gets your utility back on in a much faster time. This technology also shows areas of higher use and allows the utility to reroute gas or electricity to meet the higher demand.
The next time you have an outage, think about how much quicker it will be back on using new technology.
Morris Major
Everett
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