Atmos Energy has been transitioning to wireless meter reading devices over the last two years in the Lubbock area.

In total, Atmos has about 71,000 meters in Lubbock, and only about 5,400 of those meters have changed to the wireless meters.

“All it is, is a small radio signal device that’s installed inside the meter and it just sends up a signal to a tower of the readings and it will do that on a daily basis,” Marinda Heinrich with Atmos Energy said.

They still use meter readers for the other meters that do not have this technology. 

Heinrich also said customers may not know their meter has been switched to the newer meter.

“Most probably won’t even realize it. It’s just a small device that goes behind the dial in the meter. So the dial where the reading is, sticks out a little further than it was before, it wasn’t as flush, but other than that, they really won’t realize they have it on their meter,” she said.

Heinrich said these are not the same as what some people call ‘smart meters’.

“They’re not smart meters. There’s no way the customer can go in and turn them off, or do peak shaving of any kind, because we don’t have different rates for gas. The gas is the same, the entire part of the day, so it’s not like a smart meter,” Heinrich said.
 
“All it does is it sends up a signal of the reading to the tower and so we get it on a daily basis. What is great for our customers is they can go into our website, if they sign in on their account and set up an account to look at all their information, and they can look at all their usage on a daily basis.”
 
It will take some time before all of the meters get changed over to have this technology, according to Heinrich.

“This technology is pretty much standard in the natural gas industry, and so as we’re making improvements to our system and trying to keep it updated and safe and reliable for our customers. … Most other companies in the natural gas industries are moving towards that,” Heinrich said.

More information can be found on the Atmos Energy website, here.