I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into when I signed on to accompany the guys from Greene’s Village Electric Department as they did their monthly meter reading. Especially when I found out they’d been inquiring about my footwear. Little did I know I’d be traipsing through back yards littered with “land mines” and entering cobwebbed basements. Lucky for me, I’d chosen to wear boots.
Greene is one of only two municipalities in Chenango County to have their own electric utility. Those lucky enough to live and work within the village limits pay roughly a third of what NYSEG customers in the rest of the county pay for their electric power.
Responsibility for providing service to the village’s roughly 1,200 residential and commercial customers falls to Electric Superintendent Larri Leet, Linesman Kurt Davis and Apprentice Linesman Jeff Livingston.
Kurt and Jeff handle the meter readings each month. Kurt, who has been a linesman for 6 years, has the easy job. While he reads the vast majority of the village’s meters, he gets to use a handheld device called an I-Tron which takes the reading electronically. He barely even has to get out of his truck. He just trolls along pushing a button and makes sure all of the necessary information is recorded. He’s been doing it so long that he knows all the “hot spots,” where he can read 30 to 40 meters from one location.
Of course, it hasn’t always been that way. Kurt told me that when he first started on the job, reading meters took three people a day and a half. Now, he and Jeff are finished before lunch. Even with me tagging along.
The first part of my morning, I spent riding around with Kurt. I have to tell you, reading meters the high-tech way is not exactly exciting. Especially since Kurt wouldn’t let me even push the little button on the I-Tron. Thankfully, he had plenty of stories to keep me entertained. He regaled me with tales of being chased by dogs and how they worked to keep the lights on during the flooding of 2006. (I think secretly he misses the old days.)
I was really impressed, actually, by how well he knew the village and how seriously he and his cohorts take their jobs. They are basically on call 24 hours a day.
“You’ve got all those people relying on you,” said Kurt. Despite the high winds that morning, he had every confidence village residents would not see any problems with their service. They do a lot of maintenance on the lines, and tree trimming, to ensure that reliability.
While the main portion of the village is a square mile, the municipal electric does extend beyond that, North on County Road 32 (East River Road) and for a mile or two West on 206, so I got ride around in the country a bit as well.
I was just starting to feel pretty pleased with myself for picking such an easy gig for a ‘Punching the Clock,’ when it came time to say good-bye to Kurt and ride along with Jeff for awhile.
It didn’t take me long to understand why they had taken such an interest in my footwear, and to fully appreciate my hat and gloves. You see, Jeff does meter reading the old fashioned way.
As an apprentice lineman, Jeff is the low man on the totem (or in this case electric) pole. He is responsible for reading the commercial accounts, which is a little more complex than the residential readings and is still done by hand. There is a lot of hopping in and out of the truck, and actual math skills are required. That’s right. You not only have to record the meter reading, but also subtract it out to determine the usage.
To make things a little more interesting, there isn’t just one type of meter. Jeff has to be familiar with all of them in order to get an accurate read. Some are digital, so once you know what to look for it’s not too bad. But the older style, which use dials, are a little more confusing. They are read backwards for accuracy, from right to left rather than left to right. Confused yet? Good. So was I.
And did we start small and work our way up? Heck no. The first meters I read with Jeff were the three at Raymond Corporation. It’ll probably come as no surprise that the manufacturer is the village’s largest electric consumer, and therefore the municipal utility’s largest customer. While there, we recorded not only the total usage, but also a demand reading, which is a measure of the period of highest consumption during the month. For large commercial customers, a power factor is also recorded. This measures the efficiency in which electricity is used.
“With all of our customers, we are shooting for 90 percent efficiency or greater,” explained Jeff. The utility as a whole has to maintain that efficiency rating, because it is how their cost for bulk power is determined. Less efficient use means they will pay higher costs in the long run.
After leaving the Raymond campus, we made the rounds of the other commercial accounts. After a brief lesson on meter reading and recording, put me to work. Well supervised, of course. From then on, Jeff read the meters and I diligently recorded the information and did the math.
Sometimes the meters were out in the open, other times they were behind locked doors, in basements, garages or in fenced back yards with obvious signs of (large) canine inhabitants. One required scaling an outdoor staircase that did not appear to be secured to anything in particular. With no available hand rail and my fear of heights, it was an experience I did not enjoy. Jeff, on the other hand, found it hilarious.
I was surprised to find our list of stops included not only every business and church in town, but also the village’s highway department, wastewater treatment plant and the electric department itself. No one gets a free ride, apparently.
We finished up on Genesee Street, where we parked and walked to each of the downtown businesses. It was there that we met up with Kurt, who had already finished his route and then helped us finish ours.
Our meter reading complete, we reported to the Village Office to turn the data over to Deputy Clerk Pam Thorn, who is responsible for entering all the meter information and billing customers. Her job is another made easier by technology. She still has to enter the commercial accounts by hand (which she swore would be easier this time around thanks to my handwriting, which is MUCH neater than Jeff’s), but the readings gathered by the I-Tron are downloaded in seconds.
“We’ve come a long way, baby,” said Sue Jones, Village Clerk and Treasurer, who vividly recalls the days when entering that information fully occupied two staff members for two days.
We headed back to Cherry Street after that, where Larri was kind enough to answer all of my remaining questions. Which mainly focused on how I could get on village electric. (I know, I know. It’s never going to happen. But it was worth a shot.)
I’m probably not linesman material, but I enjoyed tagging along for the day. The guys were good sports; they didn’t complain once about all of my questions. Now, I just have to figure out how to convince them to let me up in their bucket truck.