Projects

Forsyth County Advanced Metering Infrastructure Feasibility Study

Confronting tomorrow’s issues with a future-focused, smart meter program

  • Save to favorites
    Share with your friends
Forsyth County

Seeking to solve challenges related to aging and under-reporting meters, deteriorating automated meter reading (AMR) transmitters, obtaining accurate reads, proactively detecting leaks and maintaining an aging system, Forsyth County set out to investigate the feasibility of fully deploying advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), turning to Jacobs to lead a feasibility study.

Focused on identifying the most appropriate technologies, determining reasonable costs and calculating the added benefits of adopting a proactive AMI deployment strategy as compared to the County’s reactive maintenance approach, the study also intended to provide data that the County could use to improve its day-to-day operations, reduce costs, enhance customer benefits and better serve the community of Forsyth.

  • $ 5 M

    in expected revenue over 20 years using static, advanced meters to serve 90,000 customers

  • 70 M

    gallons of water loss per year under current system, AMI offers benefits to reduce this statistic

Facing challenges head-on with ambitious metering program

The County selected us to perform a feasibility study to gain an understanding of current technology options and to explore the benefits of a full AMI implementation for the County and its customers.

We performed a full benefit-cost analysis as part of the feasibility study. The base case scenario assumed that the County would replace meters and radios as they reach end-of-life. In comparison to the base case, Jacobs developed three AMI alternatives, which illustrate the range of cost-benefit results available through any AMI system. The three scenarios include:

  1. Neptune Scenario: Network as a Service (NaaS) system, which does not require any network infrastructure and would allow for some retention of existing meters and radios/endpoints.
  2. Sensus Scenario: High-powered, low network infrastructure system, that would require a full replacement of all meters and radios/endpoints.
  3. Badger Scenario: Cellular system, which does not require any network infrastructure and would also require a full replacement of all meters and radios/endpoints.

The results provide strong financial justification for adopting AMI. Some of the key outcomes of the analysis are as follows:

  • 60% of Meter Shop time is currently spent on rechecks and transfers and approximately 20-25% of the call volume is related to high-bill complaints. AMI will provide substantial savings.
  • The average age of existing meters is 13 years; resulting in an overall 2% under registration or 70 million gallons in apparent losses each year on residential accounts, also affecting sewer bills.
  • Staff want to integrate work management, billing and GIS systems, which represents forward thinking and will prove necessary to fully leverage the AMI data across the enterprise.
  • Staff also have also been provided job titles that allow for cross-functional collaboration to help with fluctuating workload. This flexibility will also help the organization transition to AMI.
  • Using static meters instead of mechanical ones will result in an additional cost of $750,000 to $1.5 million but provide the County an additional $5 million in revenue over 20 years.