Although it’s been up and running just one year, Alabama Power’s smart meter network is already reaping huge financial and environmental dividends.

In its newsletter last week, Alabama Power reported avoiding over 10 million miles of truck rolls since deploying advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) last December…

This system automatically collects electric usage and outage information — which saves fuel, reduces emissions and helps prevent vehicle accidents and employee injuries.

Alabama Power employees and contractors no longer have to visit homes or businesses to read meters. The company says this saves nearly 900,000 gallons of gasoline, worth more than $3 million.

Also, Alabama Power says that driving 4.1 million fewer miles eliminates emissions of 2,406 pounds of nitrogen oxide, 30,684 pounds of volatile organic compounds and 17.5 million pounds of carbon dioxide. All of these savings come from simply avoiding manual monthly meter reads.

A further benefit of AMI is eliminating “off-cycle” meter readings — which occur when the power customer changes at a property. As of September, Alabama Power avoided 419,006 truck rolls for off-cycle meter readings. These would have averaged 14.87 miles per trip, for a total of 6.2 million more avoided vehicle miles.

The company has also saved truck rolls because it no longer must conduct yearly inspections of the 2,000 capacitor banks that regulate voltage on its distribution system. Instead, the AMI system monitors these banks and alerts the company if there is an issue.

Total savings? Over 10 million miles, 2 million gallons of gasoline — and 40 million tons of carbon.