City going wireless for water meter reading

The city of Anacortes will soon begin using new wireless technology to read residents' water meters. A small crew is moving from neighborhood to neighborhood in Anacortes, installing new electronic devices with small radio transmitters attached. These devices will allow a city employee to drive around the city and read all 6,250 water meters in just three days. Jim Irving, the project manager for the city, said installation needs to be completed by July 31. That's the date that Puget Sound Energy will stop reading Anacortes' water meters under its long-term city contract. After PSE notified the city it was getting out of the business of reading water meters, the city's Public Works Department went to work on what to do next. The options included hiring two full-time people to manually read meters or go high-tech with a 21st century solution using automated meter reading via radio. "There are many pitfalls in hand-reading water meters the old-fashioned way," said Anacortes Mayor Dean Maxwell. The new system, the mayor said, has been talked about for years. Until now, the only way for the city to know how much water residents use has been to send someone to look at water meters, write the numbers down, then enter them into a billing system. Those numbers on a water meter can be easily misread or numbers transposed . Irving said the new automated system promises to be more accurate, less expensive and more efficient. So, how does it work? A city employee will drive on city streets with a laptop computer and radio receiver in a vehicle. The receiver/computer combination, in essence, will query, via radio, each water meter it passes. The device mounted on the water meter will respond by transmitting the current numbers. The data will be downloaded from the mobile computer to the city's computer system at night. Maxwell said he'd like to see the receiver/computer devices mounted in city garbage trucks, thus saving even more. The system is costing the city about $1.5 million. A cost analysis by city Finance Director George Khtaian indicates it will pay for itself in seven and a half years. Maxwell said he considers that estimate to be very conservative. Wireless technology is being used at other area utilities. Skagit County's Public Utility District, which distributes water in Mount Vernon and Burlington, is using a system called touch read. Instead of requiring a meter reader to look at meter numbers and write them down, the meter reader touches the water meter with a wand-like device that automatically reads the numbers and memorizes them. The data is downloaded to a computer system at night. The team doing the installation of the new Anacortes system is using golf carts. Golf carts aren't legal street vehicles in Anacortes, but Maxwell said the city has given temporary authorization for the contractor to use them.