Projects

Montgomery Advanced Metering Infrastructure Feasibility Study

Discovering social, environmental and economic – and smart – outcomes for the Water Works & Sanitary Sewer Board of the City of Montgomery

  • Save to favorites
    Share with your friends
Montgomery Advanced Metering

When the Water Works & Sanitary Sewer Board of the City of Montgomery (Board) began exploring the installation of an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) system to support its operations and improve customer service, they turned us.

Our smart metering solutions experts worked with the Board to review its current operations and to assess the benefits and feasibility of implementing AMI for Montgomery’s 90,000 customers.

With an aim to improve registration (new meters), reduce meter reading costs, avoid cost of future meter replacement and reduce field service costs, we worked to provide the Board with a full-picture analysis of AMI to help them make the best, smart choice for their future.

  • 90 K

    customers to impact with smart benefits

  • $ 15 M

    in potential value from an AMI system with remote disconnect capabilities

Informing Montgomery’s path to a smart water system

The Board engaged Jacobs to perform an assessment of their needs and functional requirements of AMI, a financial analysis and a feasibility study. During this process, we conducted interviews with staff and compiled data and documentation on the Board’s customer base, existing processes, current utility rates, staffing levels and meter infrastructure.

This information helped to provide an in-depth understanding of the Board’s current operations and expectations concerning AMI and has been used to determine the potential financial and non-financial impacts of AMI.

We helped write a final report to summarize the Board’s AMI study, the analysis and recommendations, intending to provide a foundation from which the Board could make a strategic AMI decision.

We found that significant benefits for the Board and its customers could be realized through the implementation of AMI. Some of these will begin to be captured during the implementation process, while others will require future actions to implement, such as developing more precise hydraulic models.

Based on detailed review of the costs and benefits of AMI, analysis of the Board’s current operations, service area and system characteristics, we recommended that AMI would support the Board’s overall operational and customer service objectives.

Additional non-quantified benefits included:

  1. Improved customer service and reputation: leak detection, high use alarms, real time consumption, eliminated estimates, real time web portal, online bill pay and custom billing dates.
  2. Improved operational efficiency: soft disconnect, improved leak isolation, improved hydraulic modelling, mass balance, reduced non-revenue water, theft detection, tamper alarms, on-demand reads, off-cycle reads and reduced call volume.
  3. Improved social & environmental factors: improved call center morale, reduced risk exposure and reduced carbon emissions.

Uniquely, the Board was performing about 18,000 disconnects per year (20% of their customer base). Because of this, remote disconnect meters in an AMI system bring an excitingly good value, increasing the value of the project by about $15 million over the lifecycle.