Avista installing smart meters in Ritzville area

Avista recently announced that it is beginning to install new smart meters in Ritzville and Adams County.

Last week, The Journal received a letter from Avista stating that a crew would be visiting our office in the following weeks to install the smart meters. The smart meters, Avista says, are designed to better monitor and manage a building's energy usage, which in turn they say will allow them to "improve the safety, reliability and efficiency of energy delivery for all of our customers."

For customers, Avista says that the smart meters will:

- Provide customers with online access to charts and graphs that will "give you more insight into the energy you use."

- Provide more personalized information, which they say means customers will have the ability to better manage monthly bills.

- Be able to detect and restore power outages more quickly, since the smart meters communicate directly with Avista.

- Allow customers to receive more personalized service, since Avista's representatives will have more information available to provide solutions "unique to your specific needs."

- Contribute to a more sustainable community, as Avista will be able to integrate more renewables onto the system and therefore help reduce the region's carbon footprint.

According to Avista, the smart meters will transmit the measured energy consumption securely via wireless communications to a nearby router that has been installed on a utility power pole. The routers send data from all of the meters in its area to Avista via a secure cellular signal.

Avista confirmed that radio frequency emissions come from the smart meter, but said the emissions are "well below the RF levels produced by other common household devices like mobile phones, baby monitors, microwaves and TV systems-and are a small fraction of the limits set by the Federal Communications Commission, the agency that enforces the safety limits of RF emissions."

According to the American Cancer Society, RF radiation is non-ionizing radiation. Non-ionizing radiation has the energy to move atoms in a molecule around or cause them to vibrate and therefore lead to heat, but it can't damage DNA directly. They say it's unclear what risk, if any, there might be for those living in a home with a smart meter.

"Because the amount of RF radiation you could be exposed to from a smart meter is much less than what you could be exposed to from a cell phone, it is very unlikely that living in a house with a smart meter increases risk of cancer," the American Cancer Society said.

Ritzville is located in Zone 8 of Avista's meter deployment app. The deployment of smart meters in Zone 8 started at the beginning of this month and is expected to be completed by the end of February next year.

To view your energy usage once the smart meters have been installed, customers need to have a MyAvista account. To register for a MyAvista account, visit myavista.com/register-account.

Customers do not need to be home when their smart meter gets installed, but they are asked to ensure that their existing electricity and/or natural gas meter is free from obstructions, all pets are secure and access to the property is safe and clear. Avista does give customers the opportunity to opt-out of receiving a smart meter. More information can be found at myavista.com.