By RON LARSEN

Journal Staff Sriter

NEW ULM -- The age of electric, gas and water radio meters that can be read remotely from outside the home has arrived in New Ulm.

The city's Utilities Department has begun equipping meters in more than 90 residences throughout the city with radio units, designed to transmit readings from meters to a hand-held, radio-mounted computer. Another 90 residences should be equipped with radio meters in the near future, Director Robert Stevenson said.

"However, there won't be a massive deployment of these units," Stevenson explained. "These are at selected sites for very cost-effective reasons on the Utilities' part."

Stevenson said the driving force in placement would be for safeguarding meter readers from dog attacks, replacing obsolete remote-read devices installed 20 years ago and saving meter readers time in areas where homes are few and far between.

"Once or twice a year a meter reader will get bit by a dog, and we're trying to take care of our employees so that they don't have to be around that situation. We've also got quite a list of homes where 20 years ago we were putting mechanical remote readers on inside electric meters. They are worn out, and we can't replace them. Those particular residences paid a big chunk of money up front for that service so we feel obliged to maintain them somehow."

Areas like Oakwood Heights where there are scattered homes with only electric meters is another target. "It's a lot of walking to get a few reads so we've going to be saving a lot of meter reader time in those areas."

In addition to the placements in the city and suburban areas south of the Minnesota River, there are 80 residences in the department's electric service area across the river in Nicollet County that will get radio meters.

The number of remote readers, an expensive device, also will limit the number of residences that are converted to remote read.

"It's the same hand-held computer they've always used except right now two of them in our fleet of seven have radio receivers with little antennas built into them. Those units can either read radio signals, or you can walk up to the meter, read it, and punch in the numbers the old-fashioned way," Stevenson explained.

The department is in the process of having two more hand-held units converted to radio-read devices so that four of the seven units used by readers can read remotely.

As with anything that's new, there may be some start-up problems, and the department had several to deal with in the beginning.

Most of the difficulties were connected with the route management software that guides the data collection in the field. The software checks on the numbers inputted to see if there's been an error in input. It even tells the reader when there are meters to be read remotely. At the end of the day, the software processes the data mathematically and transmits it to the department's billing software.

Because the radio reader is programmed to start at zero for reading a new meter installation, which also reads zero, the radio unit installed on an existing meter had to be programmed to recognize the reading on the meter. In some cases, there was a failure to recognize the meter's serial number so the radio unit knew it had the right meter, Stevenson said, as well as some disconnect and programming errors.

"But staff made corrections, and the new devices seem to be working fine. It was just little clerical things that you have to go back and fix," Stevenson said.

"Our goal is for the meter reader to be able to stand on the sidewalk and read the meters. If the transmitter is located on the meter outdoors, it's got a little bit farther range than if it's located indoors," Stevenson explained. "If it ends up in the basement and has to send its signal through walls and earth, it weakens the signal, and we have to be closer to it."

The pace of these installations may seem random to those awaiting the new radio meters, Stevenson said.

"It's just however the technicians are able to arrange appointments to get in the houses, and while it would appear to be a kind of random process, they're getting into places wherever they can get in. A lot of these meters will be inside, and they have to make appointments with homeowners."

Remote

meter

readers

in use