News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The City of Allardt is transitioning from manual water readers to Advanced Metering Infrastructure for what it hopes will be a safer, more accurate meter-reading process.
Bennett Associates Incorporated President Thomas Bennett said the new water readers will automatically transmit data to Allardt City Hall every few minutes. He said this would prevent the city from having to pay workers to manually read every meter, record the data, and return to City Hall to input that data.
“So you have a guy out in a truck, he has to go out along a highway, and, often times, he has to pull off on the side of that highway, and he has to go and open a lid and look at the meter because meters are almost always along a roadway,” Bennett said. “So, dependent upon where they’re at, there may not be a safe place to pull off.”
Bennett said apparent safety hazards in manual meter reading have led the industry to move away from manual meters. He said he anticipates that the project, a high priority for the city, will be completed in eight months to a year.
He said the more advanced technology will bring numerous benefits to ratepayers as well.
“Many of us, we’ve had issues with leaks and things like that,” Bennett said. “And so, because of this technology, customers have the ability to go on and to log into the system and to set up notifications. And if any number of parameters are not met, for instance, if you’re seeing large water consumption, it can notify you.”
He said with the current meters, customers would likely have to await a monthly bill to learn that they have a leak.
Bennett said Allardt is funding this project through American Rescue Plan money, but an official price tag has not been set.
“Some utilities have thousands and thousands of meters, and even the smaller ones have over 1,000,” Bennett said. “They have to individually read those so that primary benefit is that you avoid a monthly reading of those meters and that information is sent back to the headquarters.”
Bennett said he sees very few obstacles in front of crews.
