By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
Earlier this year, the City of Great Bend released the bid
for automated meter reading ability on the city’s water meters. The hope was to
use the technology to more accurately read meters and avoid the high turnover
rate with staff assigned to reading the meters.
The Great Bend City Council voted 5-2 Monday night to approve the purchase from
Zenner USA for an Automated Meter Infrastructure (AMI) for $2,461,631.
References were checked with municipalities in Halstead and Ulysses. Both entities are currently using AMI and gave complimentary reviews.
Public
Works Director Jason Cauley said the new system will electronically send the
water usage to collectors, or towers positioned throughout town, which will
eventually get sent to the city’s billing office.
"With the AMI system, we will no longer need a meter reader to go out and actually manually read those meters," said Cauley. "The physical limitations of digging out manholes would no longer be needed. There would be a read that would go straight to Linda at the billing office."
Many customer complaints in the past stemmed from inaccurate reads or
estimations because the city could not physically get out and read the meters.
The AMI system will eliminate this issue, but Cauley said select customers
could see water bills increase because of more accurate reads.
"A customer could come in a with a complaint, and Linda would be able to look that current read up immediately," said Cauley. "In the past, we've never been able to tell the customer where the water has went, we could just tell what the meter read was. Now we can see when they're using water and help identify where a leak is at."
With roughly 6,500 commercial and residential water meters in the city’s
service area, many meters will need to be replaced for the new AMI technology. All meters changed out will be scrapped and sold for salvage.
With the high employee turnover rate and increased revenue from more accurate
reads, Great Bend anticipates breaking even or the project paying for itself in
less than five years.
Great Bend is authorized for two fulltime meter readers. Currently, one position is vacant. That position would be eliminated. The city will recognize an annual savings of $49,483 in salaries and benefits. The other employee will be reclassified to a service person/meter technician.
The city's revenue is projected to increase 2% - 3% with the elimination of aged meters that have lost accuracy.
There is an annual cost of $10,274 associated with the system for data hosting, software, maintenance to collectors, repeaters, etc. This cost would not go into effect until the third year of service. Cellular usage through Verizon is also an additional cost of $300 per year.
The AMI system is expected to be installed and operating by next February.