SAWS catching up on high-tech meters
After dumping its previous contractor due to delays, the San Antonio Water System is getting caught up on installing electronic meters, which will eliminate the need for manual monthly meter readings and can help detect leaks more quickly.
Almost 140,000 of the new meters have been installed, more than double the 61,000 meters that had been installed as of midseptember, SAWS officials say. That’s still behind the schedule the city-owned utility had in mind when it launched the Connecth2o program, previously projecting 170,000 of the meters would be in place by the end of 2023.
SAWS took over as installation program manager last fall in an attempt to get the project back on track. Trustees approved $215 million in contracts for the program in December 2021, and Vanguard Utility Services, a Kentucky-based company, was hired to handle installations, which began in May 2022.
But by the following January, SAWS had determined the company couldn’t meet the necessary timelines and terminated the contract. Vanguard was expected to have installed about 70,000 electronic meters by then but had put in only about 40,000, SAWS staff said in September.
Instead of hiring another company to fill that role, SAWS decided to bring the project in-house, tasking its on employees with developing installation routes, managing inventory and handling customer calls and support, while splitting the actual installations between SAWS employees and Olameter Corp., a Wisconsin-based company that already was conducting monthly meter readings for SAWS.
The changes are expected to ultimately cost the utility about $5 million to $10 million more than initially budgeted, according to Cecilia Velasquez, vice president for customer experience and strategic initiatives. The exact amount will depend on the internal costs of taking on the program, she said; of the 120 SAWS employees working on the project, about 44 of them were new hires.
Installations have been accelerating, with more than 24,000 completed in March. In September, SAWS staff said the program would peak at about 17,000 per month, so the speed of the work is exceeding that estimate.
Once the project is completed, manual meter readings no longer will be necessary, as the advanced water meters collect and transmit readings by the hour and wirelessly transmit data to SAWS on a secure network. That’s expected to be done by the end of 2026, and Velasquez told SAWS trustees Tuesday that she’s “confident we will meet and possibly exceed our installation timeline.”
The change is expected to ultimately reduce the utility’s water usage because the system will help detect leaks more quickly, reducing waste.
Customers with advanced meters will receive notifications if a meter indicates continuous usage of 5 gallons or more per hour for 48 consecutive hours, said Karen Guz, SAWS’ vice president of conservation. In addition to automated calls, customers who provide email addresses or cellphone numbers will receive emails or texts about potential leaks, and a pilot program shows those result in faster fixes, Guz said. Customers who receive both texts and emails resolve their issues eight hours faster than those with only automated calls, she said.
The average leak is 20 gallons an hour, she said, so identifying and fixing leaks sooner saves customers money, instead of waiting until they receive a higher-thanusual bill at the end of the month that indicates a problem.
Once all 600,000-plus SAWS meters are replaced with the advanced meters, leak alerts could save almost 1% of all water sold, based on national studies, Guz said. For SAWS, that would be 200 million gallons or 614 acrefeet of water per year, she said; 1 acre-foot is enough to cover 1 acre with 1 foot of water.
Eventually, having advanced meters in all neighborhoods also will help the utility identify leaks in its own main lines, too. SAWS will have data on how much water it provided to an area and how much was consumed there, helping utility officials determine where there are leaks in the system.
The utility loses billions of gallons of water each year to cracks, leaks, main breaks and other issues. It lost more than 18 billion gallons of water in 2022, up from more than 14 billion gallons in 2021.
The new meters also offer another way to save water, by allowing the utility to notify users who are watering their lawns more often than drought rules allow. SAWS isn’t using the meters to issue citations, and violations still must be observed in person, but it can use the data to contact customers whose use indicates they’re using irrigation systems too often. Under Stage 2 drought restrictions, which SAWS has been in since 2022, outdoor watering with an irrigation system is allowed only once per week on days determined by address.
If SAWS identifies usage that suggests an irrigation system is being used more often, the utility can notify the customer to make changes. At full deployment, that could save another 240 million gallons per year, or 737 acre-feet.
So far, 51% of customers who were notified based on information from the meters corrected those issues within two weeks, Guz said.
To continue those notification efforts, the utility will be launching an effort to collect more email addresses and cellphone numbers, she said. Currently, SAWS has functional emails for less than half of its 600,000 customers.
In addition to leak detection and violation warnings, SAWS also is working on other ways to use the data, including modeling and emergency operations, as well as long-term projects such as main leak detection and pressure management. SAWS Chief Information Officer Robert Pina said the data from the meters ultimately could allow the utility to not just tell customers they might have a leak, but to identify what kind of leak to look for based on water usage.
In response to questions from trustees and Mayor Ron Nirenberg about data protection and policies, Pina said the utility is taking “a lot of precautions” to protect the data and offered to provide information privately, in executive session. He also said SAWS is undergoing a data analytics and management study, including conversations around data ethics and responsibility.