Edison Taps Into Wireless Meter-Reading Options

For the last few months, electrical workers have quietly been planting high-tech gizmos alongside homes in Ventura County.

They are 21st century monitoring devices that allow Southern California Edison to check how much electricity a family uses without ever visiting the home.

Workers say the small radio transmitters will ultimately make their jobs safer by allowing them to steer clear of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Ventura County and other areas served by the giant utility.

Sometimes the Edison workers notify homeowners that the monitors are being installed, but other times they do not.

After installing one of the thick, gray boxes without asking permission, one meter reader told a Camarillo woman that Edison is interested in avoiding low-income and other rough neighborhoods.

But the company says it simply wants to increase efficiency.

“We’re using them where we have yards that are locked, yards that contain dogs, where we’ve had difficulty reading over the months or years,” Edison Vice President Stephen McMenamin said.

“We’ve done it only in direct response to concerns expressed by the meter readers,” he said.

Edison is now test-marketing two different kinds of wireless monitoring systems, and executives said they have not decided which of the two they will invest more heavily in over the next five years.

But either way, the technology could displace more than 500 unionized meter readers over the next few years, industry analysts say.

One product now being tested throughout the county is a waterproof steel box attached just above a home’s existing bubble meter. It relays to Edison headquarters the number of kilowatts used at the test homes minute by minute.

The other, a small transmitter built into the plastic meter bubbles, allows meter readers to figure the amount of electricity consumed each month without ever leaving their vehicles.

“It’s something we’re doing in order to improve our access,” McMenamin said. “We’re using them throughout our service territory.”

Of 4.2 million Edison customers across Southern California, 33,000 homes and businesses have been equipped with the two wireless systems, McMenamin said.

About 21,000 of the built-in transmitters have been installed so far, allowing meter readers to compute power usage by driving by a house, picking up a remote signal and punching the information into a hand-held computer.

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More than 12,000 of the bulky metal boxes have been planted at homes throughout Southern California, including hundreds in Ventura County. They send details about customers’ power usage directly to Edison computers in Los Angeles.

Edison executives say the wireless technology allows for safer and more efficient readings, but labor chiefs predict meter readers will become obsolete by the turn of the century.

“Unfortunately, it’s part of the craze spreading across America where getting rid of the employees is a good thing,” said Rae Sanborn, business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local No. 47, which represents about 550 Edison meter readers.

The company “has not yet even attempted to demonstrate to us that there’s any reasonable return on their investment,” he said.

Meter readers can read a meter for as little as 50 cents per month per house, Sanborn said.

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“If you divide 50 cents a month by the research, development and installation of these meters, you’ve got years before you get a return on the initial investment,” he said.

Most Edison workers understand that technological improvements may one day make their jobs obsolete, McMenamin said. Staying efficient and competitive remains an industrywide priority, he said.

“Our meter readers are understandably concerned about that prospect [of losing their jobs],” McMenamin said. “But we continually evaluate all kinds of technological products to enable us to do our jobs more efficiently.”

Other utilities also are buying into the wireless age by using radio frequencies to calculate how much gas or electricity their customers use each month.

One of the biggest investments has been made by Kansas City Power & Light, where executives have pledged to have more than 400,000 customers hooked onto a wireless network by the end of this year.

In addition to more efficient meter reading, industry experts point to another reason for the proliferation of the new technology.

Bruce Radford, editor of Public Utilities Fortnightly magazine, said most analysts believe utility firms will lose their monopolies in coming years and be forced to compete for customers.

When that happens, detailed information about the usage habits of customers can be a valuable marketing tool, he said.

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“The future is not just reading meters,” Radford said. “It’s understanding the customer’s usage profile so the utilities can build market share and begin stealing each other’s customers.

“Whoever owns the information that comes out of the meters will be in a position to design products in the most efficient way in a deregulated market,” he said.

William Wilbert is a marketing executive with Itron, a Spokane, Wash.-based company that manufactures wireless meter-reading systems.

Edison has bought more than 21,000 Itron products.

“We provide the cutting-edge technology,” Wilbert said. “There are a lot of hazards out there for meter readers.”

One customer looking forward to the new technology is Dee Zinke, an executive of the Building Industry Assn., who lives in Camarillo.

“It will be very easy for companies to understand the status of individual houses in times of disaster,” said Zinke, who allowed Edison to test a device at her home.

The machines also will make meter reading a safer vocation, she said.

“I appreciate being helpful to companies that care about their employees,” she said.

But even though Camarillo resident Barbara Groom said she might welcome savings in her energy bill, she is skeptical of the technology.

“It sounds like a little bit of an invasion,” said Groom, who recently turned down a request to become an Edison test house. “I don’t want to be hooked up to their computer.

Neither did she approve of the way the Edison worker handled himself when he approached her house.

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“I didn’t know what they were for and neither did he,” she said. “It seemed like he was hoping people were not home, so he could go ahead and place it on before they would notice.”

Groom sent the man away. But that did not deter the Edison worker.

“He went next door and proceeded to put this funky little box on the side of the house above their meter,” she said. “I don’t even think he knocked on the door.”

An Edison spokeswoman said the company planned to notify every test homeowner before the monitors were attached to homes in Camarillo, Thousand Oaks, Ojai and elsewhere.

But the courtesy notices may have come late in some cases, Millie Paul said.

“We attach them and we send out notices to the customers,” she said of the equipment.

“There’s no impact to the monthly bill, and it doesn’t interfere with any other devices.”