Our 1.4 million customers have advanced meters that automatically send usage information over power and phone lines.

These advanced meters have virtually eliminated the estimated bill. Today, more than 99.8 percent of our bills are based on actual electricity use.

In unusual cases where we don’t receive a reading, we estimate usage based on your historic use and the weather. We then adjust your next bill up or down to reflect any difference between our estimate and your actual use.

Expanded benefits

In late 2006, we added the capability to store and access hourly usage information from all of our 1.4 million meters. In the future, this will support electric choice and allow the company and energy suppliers to offer you different pricing options. Currently, this allows us to show you detailed usage information through our Energy Analyzer.

We continue to find new uses for our meters. Today, we’re using them to help improve our response to power outages. We’re also using them to monitor the health of our delivery system and plan improvements.

Reading the meter

You can check your own meter if you’d like by reading the series of dials.

Stand in front of the meter and write down the number that each dial hand has just passed. If a dial hand is between numbers, write down the lower number.

Once you’ve jotted down the numbers, subtract the reading on your last bill from your own reading to get the amount of kilowatt-hours you’ve used.