07-27-2005 Council Agenda - Laserfiche WebLink

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problems with the exception of the wire failing. An additional issue is the fact that many residents do not like having another piece of equipment, despite its small size, on the outside of their house to go along with their electric and gas meters. Reading of meters and entering of data is yet another opportunity to gain efficiencies. Serco reads our residential meters. We paid $1067 last quarter for this service. They usually provide one reader who reads all of the residential meters in about one week and then gives the data to Jessica in the form of a spreadsheet. Jessica then manually enters the data into our computer system and checks for misreads. She then contacts Serco to perform re -reads or asks public works to get new, correct readings. Our public works crew reads commercial meters over the course of two or three days. There are no remotes on commercial meters so it is necessary to enter each business and read the inside meter which consumes a lot of time, particularly in big apartment buildings and warehouses. The cost to read commercial meters is approximately $1000 per quarter based on public works' time. A New Option: At the present time, the city purchases all meters and related equipment from Hydro Metering Technology in Burnsville. We use Badger brand meters for all applications. In recent discussions with our sales representative, I was introduced to their newest radio -read technology. It involves a small box either attached to the meter head or secured to a wall inside the house near the meter with a wire run between them. Using a handheld device, one employee can drive through town and pick up the signal from each meter and record the reading in the computer. The handheld device is then connected to the main computer at city hall and all readings are downloaded and ready for billing purposes. Any potential problems are automatically flagged by the system. The inside radio boxes use a battery with a 15 -20 year life. There are numerous advantages to this system. They are outlined below: • Installation: With no more wires to run to the outside of the house the installation time will be greatly reduced as it will require only the tightening of two fittings on each side of the meter. Currently, it takes anywhere from 20 minutes to over an hour for some installations and change - outs with most of this time devoted to running a wire for the remote. We anticipate the new style meters to take no longer than 10 minutes. This frees up time for our staff and creates much less of an inconvenience for the homeowner. • Reading: With the radio -read system, it is anticipated that, once the system is fully changed over, it will take one person less than an eight -hour day to read the entire system. There is very little work involved in collecting readings and the reader will not have to enter private property to obtain readings. There have been some issues with some of the companies we have contracted with regarding misreads and their inability to read some remotes that public works has had no problem reading. We can also operate under a dual system using radio reads for some meters and continuing with manual reads until a meter change out is warranted. • Accuracy: The radio -read system provides an accurate reading on demand with no possibility of wire failure or stopped remote. This will also improve customer relations. Currently, if a remote stops it has first slowed down over the course of a quarter or two. When public works fixes the meter they give Jessica the true reading from the inside meter. The resident then gets billed 2