Is The Recent Smart Water Meter Mayhem Coming to a City Near You?
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In recent days, smart water meters around North Texas have come under scrutiny. After the City of Plano reported mass signal failure across its $10.6 million meter systems, speculation sparked. In fact, last week, a volley of articles outlined area concerns. For those in other municipalities wondering if this technology could spell hang-ups in their hydro bills or wasteful city spending, we dug around to get the scoop on smart meters across the metroplex.
Before we get started, we should get savvy on the different types of smart meters.
AMR VS AMI Smart Meters
Over the years, there have been many innovations in residential water meters. Recently, smart metering solutions have widely replaced their mechanical counterparts of the past. Manually read velocity or displacement meters have largely been swapped by either Automated Meter Reading (AMR) Meters or Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) Meters.
The difference between AMR and AMI meters is pretty simple. Using radio frequency, WiFi, or cellular transmission, AMR meters send signals to readers in proximity to the unit. In contrast, AMI meters, like the ones used in Plano, are continually communicating to a broad network and allow readings from anywhere.
In the simplest terms, AMR is like a Bluetooth connection and AMI is like a 5G connection. Where AMR can connect to remote devices nearby, AMI is always connected and can transmit signals across a wider network.
The Case of Aclara Smart Meters
If you’re wondering about the type of meters affected in the recent Plano network failure, we put together an extensive article outlining the issue. The meters in question are provided by a company called Aclara Technologies out of St. Louis. Apparently these meters have caused issues throughout the country in cities like Minneapolis and New York City.
Aside from Plano, we found no other North Texas cities that use Aclara smart meters. However, central and southern Texas cities, including Austin and Sugar Land, have implemented the company’s AMI technology.
What Smart Meter Tech Does My City Use?
If you’re wondering what your city uses in terms of water meter tech, check out our breakdown below.
Dallas
Although it’s one of the most innovative economic engines in the country, the City of Dallas still primarily relies on traditional water meter technologies. There are some pilot programs to upgrade systems, but currently only about 2% of Dallas’ 300,000 meters are AMI-transmitted.
Fort Worth
A city that never shies away from sustainable solutions, Fort Worth features AMI meters. Its Xylem meters connected to the Sensus FlexNet communication network and promise a reduction in field investigations by 90%. The system not only saves about $1.1 million in contract work but also notifies customers proactively of potential leaks.
McKinney
The city that is “Unique by Nature” currently uses AMI technology via Allegro Master Meters. City spokesperson CoCo Good commented, “We use Master Meter for our residential meters and Multi-jet for commercial. We do use smart meter technology to transmit meter readings for billing purposes. We completed most of the change to this technology about two years ago.”
Southlake
Following a summer of sky-high water bills, the City of Southlake implemented AMI cellular transmissible water meters through Badger Meter. This smart meter technology pairs with an EyeOnWater app to allow the city’s 10,000 homes to track water usage both weekly and monthly in real time.
Richardson
Like its closest neighbor, Richardson doesn’t yet use AMI smart meter technology for its water meters. The information available on the city’s website states, “All new meters installed have the capability of being read visually within the meter vault and remotely through a receptacle using a probe connected to a portable data acquisition device.” This “probe” would indicate an AMR type of read.
Frisco
Frisco also plugs into an AMI network. According to Meters Superintendent, Jesse Rodriguez, this northern suburb uses Neptune Meters and its LoRa network-as-a-service (NaaS) solution that promises future compatibility of multiple reading systems. In theory, this would insulate these meters from the software update issue experienced by Plano.
