The City of Renton Public Works Department has completed the conversion of 17,900 water meters to an Automated Meter Reading (AMR) system earlier than expected and the city estimates it has already saved 87 million gallons of water.
Expected to take five years, the city completed the replacement project in about three-and-a-half years.
The AMR system reduces meter reading costs and is designed to improve efficiency, since staff no longer have to drive-by and walk-through hundreds of miles of streets per month to read the meters, and meter misreads are eliminated. Customers are also billed for actual water used during each month, rather than estimated usage.
The system also sends alerts on high water consumption and allows staff to notify customers about potential leaks on their private service lines or interior building plumbing, which has already saved several homeowners and businesses thousands of dollars, according to the city.
As of August 2015, the system detected 793 major leaks, with each leak more than 35 gallons per hour, and 2,700 minor leaks, with each leak more than 7 gallons per hour.
In one instance, staff noticed that a customer had a large leak on an irrigation water service line that was wasting 18,00 cubic feet (about 135,000 gallons) of water every day. Thanks to the AMR the leak that would have cost the customer $30,000 in their monthly bill was detected and fixed.
It is estimated that the savings from potential water loss that this new system has provided over the past 3.5 years is 87 million gallons.
The conversion cost a total of $5.2 million and as funded by water rates. Based on a study prior to conversion, the new meters are expected to save the city between $277,000 and $810,000 per year.
Along with the new meters, the city has developed a customer service online tool that enables city water customers to view their real time water use. The daily water use graph will show a potential water leak if the meter registers unusually high-water consumption or continuous consumption over a 24-hour period.
For directions on using the on-line tool, please visit http://rentonwa.gov/WaterUsage/.
