High-tech water meters to make debut next year
The San Antonio Water System’s board on Tuesday approved the systemwide installation of advanced water meters for $215 million.
Contracts were awarded to Vanguard Utility Services for installation, Itron Inc. for the advanced meter infrastructure technology, VASS Solution for program management and Smartworks for data management.
Advanced meter systems will replace the usual positive displacement meters — which all SAWS customers use now — with more advanced meters called Ultrasonic, or static meters.
The new meters will collect hourly meter readings from each home or business and wirelessly transmit the information to SAWS on a secure network. It can generate bills or even alert SAWS and customers to leaks or high water use via text or email alerts — all online.
Unlike the current meters, the static advanced meter has no moving parts, a longer lifespan and better accuracy during low-flow conditions, such as below 1.5 gallons per minute. The meters also eliminate the need for SAWS to send employees into the field, decreasing traffic time and unnecessary visits. The network is the same one used by CPS Energy.
“First and foremost, we want to enhance the customer experience by providing more water-usage information to customers,” said Mary Bailey, vice president of customer experience and strategic initiatives. “We want to help prevent those surprise high bills caused by water leaks or because the customer may not know how often their irrigation system is running.”
This new system will also help reduce SAWS’ gallons-per-capita per day, Bailey said.
SAWS conducted a pilot program and assessment from March to November in north, west and central San Antonio. Each area had about 2,500 meters — 1,800 with the new static meters and 700 with retrofitted positive displacement meters. While SAWS found the difference between the positive displacement meters and the static meters to be not statistically significant as a whole, Bailey said the difference may have been understated due to the amount of water usage in the pilot. From all the homes and businesses with new meters, 442 customers were alerted to continuous leaks, which saved water and limited surprise high bills.
“The new meters are most valuable during low-usage times,” Bailey said. “They also don’t degrade over time like the usual meters we have.”
Positive displacement meters may last 15 to 20 years, but they degrade over time, causing issues with accuracy. The pilot program also avoided 186 field trips to meter sites by using the electronic data.
The systemwide deployment will be done over four years, installing 65,000 meters beginning in mid-2022 and covering 600,000 electronic meters and communication devices across SAWS’ service area through 2026.