5.3 EMRUSR 10-08-2024��i
Elk River ,
Municipal Utilities UTILITIES COMMISSION MEETING
TO:
FROM:
ERMU Commission
Mike Tietz - Technical Services Superintendent
MEETING DATE:
AGENDA ITEM NUMBER:
October 8, 2024
5.3
SUBJECT:
Advanced Metering Infrastructure Update
ACTION REQUESTED:
None
DISCUSSION:
As of October 3, Allegiant has completed 2,128 residential water meter replacements and 213
retrofits. Allegiant's goal is to maintain four technicians working during the duration of our
project.
Allegiant's commercial meter subcontractor (Archer Plumbing) has completed 19 commercial
meter replacements and 14 retrofits as of October 3.
Staff have started replacing the seasonal irrigation meters to help mitigate issues related to
these types of services. We are tagging these meters with labelling that indicates the location of
the meter so that the companies maintaining these seasonal irrigation systems re -install them
at the correct location.
To date we have made 31 residential repairs utilizing master plumber Karsten Nelson (Archer
Plumbing) with a running total of $11,035.36 in repair costs. This is about a 1.45% repair rate
based on the total number of installed water meters. In April 2024, the Commission voted to
absorb these residential costs at an estimated $300 per job for approximately 100-150 homes,
totaling between $30-45k. The residential water meter exchange work is about 48% complete.
Our distributor informed us on September 26 that the anticipated shipment of approximately
3,000 residential electric meters scheduled for October delivery from Sensus will be delayed. I
will be meeting with the Senior Director of North America Sales at Sensus during the Reach
conference in Atlanta that I will be attending in a couple weeks. I plan to discuss the supply
chain issues that we are experiencing and work on finding an acceptable resolution to this
problem.
We have informed Allegiant of this delay and will be discussing whether we are willing to allow
them to work through most of our available inventory of electric meters. This means that there
would most likely be a postponement of the installations until we receive additional inventory
in 2025.
Page 1 of 1