Cumberland
Valley Electric
Electronic Turtles
September 1998
It seems odd that
in the high-tech business of electricity, bills are still figured
based on readings by someone walking from house to house and looking
at your meter.
 But that’s
changing and Cumberland Valley Electric Cooperative in southeastern
Kentucky is leading the way.
The co-op, which
serves more than 20,000 customers in eight counties, is installing
electronic devices, called Turtles, in its meters that will let
workers take readings without leaving the office.
“This allows us
to send out more accurate and up-to-date bills,” says Cumberland
Manager Ted Hampton. “We’ve always had people read their own
meters. Years ago they enjoyed reading their meter, but today people
are not as accustomed to taking the readings and sending them in.”
Cumberland is one
of about 225 utilities around the country, and the first in
Kentucky, to start installing the Turtles, according to
Minnesota-based manufacturer Hunt Technologies Inc. Hampton first
saw the Turtles at a 1995 conference of the National Rural Electric
Cooperative Association, which pioneered their development.
Cumberland became one of the first test utilities in the nation. It
started installation in 1996 and now has close to 6,000 installed.
At that rate, it will take the co-op about three more years to be
“fully Turtlized.”
The devices are
called Turtles because they send the information back relatively
slowly (it can take about a day and a half), but reliably, through
the electric lines. To picture what one looks like, imagine a green
pack of gum with a few twisted paper clips glued to one side and two
sugar cubes stuck on the other side.
The information
the Turtles send back can also help the co-op improve the quality of
service and even repair outages faster.
Cumberland system
engineer Joe Carroll showed me how that works. He called up a list
on his computer and pointed to a line of numbers from the first
Turtle installed. He said, “This customer has had 16 blinks (brief
power outages) since December of 1996.” He explains that by
matching those numbers with ones from other houses nearby, they can
figure out what might be causing the power interruptions.
“This can help
us straighten out problems sooner,” says office manager Robert
Prevatte. “Without this kind of timely information, it could be
months before we might know if there’s a problem with a meter.”
He adds that by having the readings automatically computerized, it
will save the labor of typing in the 20,000 readings a month.
“It makes the
customers happier,” he says.
Serviceman Danny
Hembree, who oversees installation of the improved meters, agrees.
“Everybody is tickled to death to get them,” he says. “Now
they don’t have to go out in the rain or cold or heat to read
their meters.”-Paul Wesslund |
