25G - AGMT METER INFRASTRUCTURE - Laserfiche WebLink

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DW AMI Feasibility Report I Client Name: City of Santa Ana 12 Conclusion The North American water market is continuing to migrate from manual meter reading and lower capability AMR systems to AMI solutions. Black & Veatch supports this migration because of the tremendously transformative opportunity that AMI provides to utilities. As detailed throughout this report, AMI solutions provide a much richer quantity of data (including interval data on all meters), on a more frequent basis, and at a higher level of performance. This enabling technology will allow the City to leverage the meter data to improve operational efficiencies, support enhanced infrastructure management, enhance customer service, and serve as a platform for future programs and initiatives. The maturity of the water AMI market has continued to favorably evolve, and the City will be able to gain from the improvements in technology, capabilities (like leak detection), and cost savings that these improvements can provide. It is critical to understand the business drivers and benefits of AMI, as each utility has unique requirements and conditions. There does not appear to be significant additional downward trending for costs; the focus now is transitioning to the delivery of additional solution capabilities, especially around smart water analytics and customer engagement, so waiting would not likely deliver a lower cost solution to the City and its customers. The analytics and customer engagement solutions are built upon the core AMI solutions; although the City will initially focus on the AMI solution implementation and meter deployment, the market for the value- added solutions will continue to develop, allowing the City to take advantage of these enhancements also. The business case for the City appears to be favorable. Additional analysis must be done and a reasonable approach must be taken when evaluating costs and benefits since some of the aspects cannot be financially quantified such as customer engagement and customer service satisfaction. Additionally, there is an opportunity cost if the project is not implemented as there will be ongoing investment in the current manual meter reading technology, meter replacements and related labor costs. This ongoing investment in current technology can be used for the AMI project implementation. Enhanced customer service and providing hourly reads for all customers is a major strategic goal of the City that can be fulfilled by AMI project. This report details the challenges and business drivers that have been identified as the City continues to replace a number of its meters on annual basis. This is the opportune time to make the transition to AMI, rather than repeating the meter replacement or retrofit (with MTUs) at a later date. AMI initiatives involve the transformation of many aspects of the water utility and, given the proven value that they deliver, there has been an increase in AMI implementations across North America. Key aspects of the AMI initiatives include the following: ❑ Using the AMI system and underlying enabling technology to migrate from a periodic meter reading solution to a more constant information gathering process from the meters, arguably City's best connection with its customers. El Including the meter data management capabilities and other available analytics tools to leverage the base meter data for system planning, non -revenue water, customer leak detection, distribution leak detection, and other efficiency opportunities. 25G-178