Itron announced that CenterPoint Energy natural gas distribution business will complete installation of advanced metering technology across the utility’s six-state service territory by the end of 2015.
Upon completion, the project will implement 3.3 million communication modules in these states as well as Arkansas and Mississippi.
The company has already installed communication modules to nearly 1.3 million gas meters in parts of the company’s service territory in Minnesota, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas.
Itron will provide communications modules that attach to CenterPoint Energy’s customers’ existing natural gas meters, allowing meter readings to be collected once a month by a mobile meter reading device mounted to CenterPoint Energy vehicles.
The company says the technology eliminates the need to enter yards to obtain monthly readings and improves the productivity of the utility’s meter readers by allowing a single employee in a vehicle to read up to 10,000 meters per day.