Newport News, VA Deploys 130,000 Mueller AMI Meters

Newport News Waterworks (“Newport News”) is a regional water provider on the lower Virginia Peninsula, owned and operated by the City of Newport News, that serves over 410,000 people in Hampton, Newport News, Poquoson, York County, and part of James City County.

With a service area encompassing over 250 square miles, and over 133,000 metered accounts, Newport News plays a vital role in ensuring an adequate supply of high-quality drinking water to residents and businesses across the region.

Eight years ago, Newport News started having discussions about moving away from reading their mechanical, manually read meters every other month to go to monthly billing. Knowing they did not have adequate staffing to handle that task, the department decided to outsource its meter reading responsibilities to a third party. That led to new challenges as the contractors often had difficulty with their own staffing levels, which caused schedule and timeliness issues, resulting in the customer’s bill window being longer than 30 days and/or the utility having to estimate bills.

While this was transpiring Newport News was proactively researching and conducting a feasibility study to determine if upgrading their meter technology to AMI at that time was the right move.