The Jefferson County Public Utility District is budgeting a $1.5 million plan to replace numerous meters across the county with electronic meters.
The old meters will be …
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The Jefferson County Public Utility District is budgeting a $1.5 million plan to replace numerous meters across the county with electronic meters.
The old meters will be replaced with a new advanced metering system that will allow the PUD to monitor resident’s meters remotely, leading to faster updates on power outages and other potential issues.
The switch to the new smart meters will be more cost-effective and environmentally friendly for the utility company, officials said, considering workers won’t have to drive out as often to monitor meters around the area.
“We’ve been trying to replace the meter system for a while,” said PUD spokesman Will O’Donnell.
“This is the new industry standard,” he said.
The financial side of the plan hasn’t been fully confirmed yet as the utility company has issued a request for proposals in late October, and will select a vendor for the new meters in December.
If all goes as planned, installation of the electronic devices will start in spring 2022.
O’Donnell said the installation process will take two to four years to fully complete the switch to the advanced metering infrastructure system.
The new system is greatly needed in Jefferson County, considering that most meters in the area are more than 30 years old with only about a third of them replaced in the last decade. Some meters were last replaced in the 1950s and 1960s by Puget Sound Energy, the utility company in charge before Jefferson County Public Utility District took over operations in 2013.
“These are very old meters. We have kind of a Frankenstein system,” O’Donnell said.
Although most residents will be happy to make the switch to the newer smart meters, some have voiced safety concerns over radio frequencies and radiation from the devices that they fear could cause cancer and other health issues.
According to the National Institution of Health and the American Cancer Institute, electronic meters do not pose any major safety concerns to personal health through radiation exposure or radio frequencies.
Although the meters do emit small amounts of radiation and radio frequencies — around the same amount as smart phones and other tech devices — they are typically installed outside of homes.
If any residents are still concerned for their safety, the utility district has the option for customers to opt out from having the new electronic meters installed on their property.
The utility company is excited to move forward with installing 20,000 new meters around the county.
The project has been in plans for multiple years, and was delayed in 2018.
“From customers to billing department, we’ve all been looking forward to this for a long time. We’ve been working on these plans for years,” O’Donnell said.
