Starting in 2019, Pacific Power customers in Central Oregon will be able to view data on their daily electricity use after the electric utility installs so-called smart meters at homes and businesses.

Pacific Power will install the digital meters in parts of Oregon and Northern California in phases, with the first installations taking place this month in Independence — a town of 9,666 west of Salem.

The new meters will replace 590,000 traditional meters and will help residential and business customers track their power usage daily, providing homeowners the ability to see the hourly cost of their power. The meters will also track outages instantly, allowing faster response times in the event of an outage, according to Pacific Power.

The smart meters will send power-use information to Pacific Power wirelessly, eliminating the need for manual readings. This helps save the company time and money because there is no need to send workers to each location to read meters, said Pacific Power spokesperson Tom Gauntt.

“Eventually we will only have a minimal number of folks on hand who will need to go out to a property because there’s always some sort of special case,” he said. “But the idea is that this will be much more efficient.”

Pacific Power will begin installing smart meters for its nearly 80,000 combined residential and business meters customers in Central Oregon in May 2019. Installations should be completed before fall 2019, Gauntt said. Residents in the tri-county area will be notified by mail when to expect the installation of smart meters.

Customers will be able to access their daily energy-use information through the Pacific Power website about six weeks after the smart meter is installed. This information could help people better understand their electric bills and make decisions to save money and energy.

“It won’t talk about specific appliances but will show more about the timing of things and you can figure that out on your own,” Gauntt said. “Maybe that washer isn’t as efficient as you thought, for example, so you can make your own observations based on the information.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7829, acolosky@bendbulletin.com