Goodbye meter man?

Ocala - Many Ocala residents soon won't be seeing power company meter readers traipsing through their backyards. Dogs will soon have to find someone else to bark at.

Ocala Electric Utility will replace about 75,000 residential and commercial water and electric meters with automated ones over the next 14 months. The new meters, Ocala spokesman Sonny Allen said, should save the city close to $1 million each year.

"The meters will be read through fiber optics and radio signals rather than sending someone house to house," Allen said. "They will be more accurate and pay for themselves over the years."

Allen said the meters, many of which will be manufactured by Ocala-based Elster AMCO Water and installed by Johnson Controls - U.S. Bronco Services, will cost about $20 million, a bill that customers will not have to foot. OEU will pay off the cost as part of a 20-year bond.

"We're paying over time," he said, "so it will not be an expense customers will have to take on."

Plans for the new meters have been in the works for three years, said Joe Noel, the utility's supervisor of resource management. Facing an internal system that was starting to break down and a growing customer base, the company needed a bigger solution.

"We had a need to increase speed to keep up with our growth without expanding personnel," Noel said. "We had to go outside the box."

Besides cutting costs, Noel said the new meters will be able to catch potential problems and identify power outages more quickly. Issues such as water leaks, he said, can be caught before bills go out.

"The meters will have a last-gasp technology that will send us a signal if the power goes out," Noel said. "We'll immediately know when and where an outage occurs. Then we'll be able to respond more efficiently and restore power faster."

While the new system will eliminate the need for 11 meter readers, Noel said there would be no layoffs as a result. Of the 11 readers, five are city employees, while the other six are contractors.

"We'll do everything we can to make sure city employees stay city employees," he said. "They will have first refusal on jobs that open up that they are qualified for."