Local homeowners won’t have to worry about being home for monthly meter readings, that their meter will die or that the dog will bite the meter reader.

Next month, the city of Bowling Green will be the first northwest Ohio city to implement a new meter reading system. Unlike the current walk-by automated reading system that requires a monthly visit from a meter reader, all updates will be done via computer.

The installation of Distribution Control Systems, Incorporated’s two-way automated communications can read a meter at any time and has multiple benefits not only for residents and business owners, but the city’s utilities department.

Currently, the utilities department performs 7,400 readings per year in addition to 14,400 electric readings and 10,000 water meter readings each month. Though the system will cost roughly $4.2 million to install, Utilities Director Kevin Maynard said he expects the city will save about $1.6 million over 10 years.

“It’s a fully operational two-way system where we can recover readings whenever we wanted them and could also give other info,” said Maynard, who suggested the new system for Bowling Green.

This project, which Maynard expects to be completed in August 2009, is projected to save city dollars, satisfy residents, eliminate problems with dead meters and meter-tampering.

“It will also be able to tell us if we want to collect the readings often enough where the power is being used and how often in the system,” Maynard said. “It will help us with out planning to try to avoid getting transformers and circuits overloaded, particularly in the summer months when everybody’s running the air conditioners.”

The utilities department will also be able to send out a signal to a meter and get a reading if a special reading is needed.

“If you say you’re moving in the 15th, we’ll have a reading for you on the 15th,” Maynard said.

Graduate student and Bowling Green homeowner Kelley Harmon said she looks forward to the new system because of those inconvenient visits from meter readers.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” she said. “It will eliminate human error.”

In the past, Harmon said she’s had several notices placed on her front door because she wasn’t home when the meter readers arrived.

“It’s more complicated in our town because we have such a large student population,” Maynard said. “We’ve got 1,000 students that move in the fall, we set up electric and water account. In the spring people move out again send people out there to do the same thing.”

A feasibility study performed by the Brampton, Ontario-based ValuTech Solutions found that despite the large campus population, the University accounts for only 16.7 percent of electric and 14.2 percent of water usage.

Eighty-seven percent of Bowling Green is residential, 12 percent is commercial and 1 percent is industrial, the study showed.

The city currently employs two meter readers who check 300 to 400 meters per day for 20 days of each month.

“Sometimes have to pull in people from other departments to get all those readings,” Maynard said.

Because the two meter readers will no longer have jobs to do, the utilities department will give them 18 months to transfer to new city positions.

Bob McOmber, city councilman and chair of public utilities, said the new system has great advantages.

“Basically it will pay for itself,” he said, admitting he was initially skeptical.

While the first meter won’t be installed until March 15, Maynard already has a request for Bowling Green residents.

“We need people to cooperate,” he said.