City staff provide council answers to questions about metering system

Published 2:25 pm Wednesday, July 29, 2015

On July 20 the Auburn City Council was ready to vote on entering into a $5.4 million contract with Ferguson Waterworks to outfit Auburn and its 14,000 water customers with an automated metering and billing system.

But, beset by questions about the system and the changeover, council members put off the vote to their first meeting in August to provide City staff time to hunt up answers.

For instance, a response to Councilman Rich Wagner’s inquiry: how much future capital would the City save with the new system?

At the Monday study session, Wagner, optimistic, returned to the question.

“My gut feeling is that it’s going to save us half a million bucks a year,” Wagner said, “but I wish somebody would (spend) a little more than five minutes on that to give us some idea why this is a good deal beyond the other (positives),”

Kevin Snyder, director of Community Development and Public Works, said that the automated metering would definitely create increased operational efficiencies. After all, that is what advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) is about, he said — and those efficiencies may, he cautioned, result in capital cost savings.

But no sure-fire thing.

“If the city reduced its water consumption by 1 percent, that could equate to potentially up to a half-million dollars in cost savings, which could be repurposed back into capital construction,” Snyder said. “But we as staff did not feel that we could tell the council with any absolute certainty, without misguiding or misdirecting you in terms of what AMI is, that … there will be capital cost savings.”

Wagner said he considered a 1 percent reduction in consumption a “pretty conservative” estimate, adding that he was confident it would happen.

Wagner asked whether staff were confident there was enough money in the budget for retrofitting meters into “50-year-old receptacles.”

Snyder said that staff had estimated those resource costs not only for the department of Community Development and Public Works but also for other departments, based on what they had to say about AMI.

“We feel very confident in the numbers,” Snyder said. “We have a pretty good overall feeling about the overall health and condition of our meters. We know that more than 25 percent of them are not in the best condition, and we know that those will probably take more effort. But we have had an ongoing program of changing out meters.

“A lot of our efforts will be dealing with relatively new meter technology, which should help us with our efficiencies,” Snyder said. “But there will be some of our meter technology that will cause us some problems. In addition, we will have those instances when, because of where meters are located or because of other factors … we may take a little bit more time with some cases.”

Councilman Wayne Osborne wondered if the City had asked other communities that had brought in AMI and used it for a year about the sorts of savings they realized during that time span.

Utilities Engineering Manager Lisa Tobin said staff had conducted an investigation through the American Water Works Association of utilities nation wide to see whether it could provide any information.

“This is really focused on operational efficiency, better customer service through leak detection and on being able to use this data to analyze future water resources. So they really have not been able to provide us with any information,” Tobin said. “We reached out to our consultant, HDR, which is a multi-national firm that provides AMI assistance to utilities across the nation, and they were also not aware of being able to really provide the quantification.”

Other revelations:

• The system will not be affected by extreme weather conditions

• On occasion, the City may have to dispatch personal to read the meters manually, but those instances will be few and far between.

• The City will be able to shut off or interrupt water service from the desktop but there will be rare situations where someone has to out and do manual shutoff.

• The City expects to spend $165,000 a year in operating costs for the AMI system compared to $250,000 a year in operating costs for its existing system.

About AMI and its benefits

• In a box next to the customer’s water meter, the vendor installs a small radio and its transmitter to send real-time water-use data to several antennae. These broadcast the information to a centralized server. From there the data makes its way to the City’s customer service department for water-use analysis and billing;

• The City gets a more consistent revenue flow;

• It should take about 2 to 2½ years for the vendor to install the hardware and software and replace the meters.

• When the changeover is complete, customers will be able to monitor their own water use on a City webpage. They will longer have to wait for a meter reader to reveal a costly leak;

• The City will realize a reduction in costs as it will no longer have to send meter readers out;

• More efficient billing for the City, and real time, unauthorized-water-use detection capabilities;

• Help for the City in its efforts to conserve water.