With complaints about Lubbock Power & Light’s electric and water billing becoming more common, LP&L offered the chance to meet with a meter reader on a route to learn more about the process, and show residents how to check their own meters.

Keith Brown has walked the streets of Lubbock for 28 years. He is one of 13 meter readers that LP&L employs to check about 187,000 electric and water meters in the city.

“I’ve seen a lot of things,” Brown said.

He explained most of the water meters are in alleys, while a large number of electric meters are in residents’ backyards, making them more difficult to read.

“Majority of them are going to be on the back of the house and so we have to scope them out with binoculars,” Brown stated.

Brown said the electric meters “work just like a watch.”

“It takes about 6 months to a year before you get really proficient at reading an electric meter. Water meters aren’t too hard, as long as you got them cleaned off you can read those pretty easy,” he said.

“LP&L is in charge of electricity, but of course we read both sets of meters,” said spokesperson Matt Rose. “Our meter readers are out here every day, reading those meters. Whether it be good weather, or whether it be weather like today, where it’s rainy or a little bit cold.”

“One of the best things that we want to let our customers know about is that if you look on your bill today, you will see that there is a read date on there. You can find it on the electric portion of your bill. And it’ll say the read date. That date is going to be when we read your bill every single month,” Rose said.

“We encourage you on or about that day every month, go to your backyard go into your alley, look at your meter and read that amount. And then double check us,” Rose added.

“Take a picture of it with your phone and call us,” he explained. “We’ll have somebody come out take a look at it. we can read it on that date, we can double check on when you’ve taken the picture on your phone.

“We are human,” Brown explained. “Every once in a while we are going to make mistakes. If you see a big discrepancy in your bill, from what it normally is, either too high or too low, call down to the office and they’ll come out and check the meter again.”

Rose encouraged residents to check with LP&L if they have questions.

“If you see that there is a spike in your usage you feel is an error, your first step should be to call us and let us see if it’s an issue on LP&L’s side or the City of Lubbock side of the table,” he said. “We want to work with you to make sure to find a solution if there’s a problem.”

Rose mentioned LP&L has made a push for advanced metering technology, or “smart meters” which Brown supports, though Brown was concerned it could cost workers their jobs.

More information on how to read an electric meter can be found by clicking here.

Additional details on reading water meters are available by clicking here.