Howard County has a population of 332,000, with approximately 85 percent of residents on public water and sewer. The county manages approximately 79,000 water accounts, including 74,000 residential and 5,000 commercial/industrial meters, and exclusively imports water from adjacent water suppliers. In 2009, the county began transitioning from manual-read to remote-read meters, replacing 47,000 meters by 2015 before pausing to evaluate emerging AMI technologies. A new replacement contract was initiated in March 2015 to improve metering accuracy and ensure compatibility with AMI. In 2019, external partners were engaged to accelerate installations, but COVID-19 halted progress. The program relaunched in April 2023 with a comprehensive AMI strategy and an ambitious two-year timeline to replace 24,000 remaining residential meters. This initiative aims to improve water usage data accuracy and reduce non-revenue water losses. The county currently maintains two separate legacy AMR systems. The current meter replacement strategy aims to systematically transition Howard County from the existing automated meter reading (AMR) systems to a unified state-of-the-art AMI system, integrating all existing residential, commercial, and industrial water meters. This assessment includes a revamping of the county’s standard details to update metering construction practices across the county. The project required significant coordination to maintain continuity while transitioning from AMR to AMI technologies.
After this session, participants will be better able to:
• Recognize the complex timeline and challenges of Howard County’s water meter modernization program, which began in 2009 and continues through the present day with multiple strategic adjustments.
• Recognize the technical objectives driving Howard County’s meter replacement strategy, including the goals of increasing measurement accuracy, reducing water loss, and unifying two automatic meter reading (AMR) systems into a single advanced metering infrastructure (AMI).
• Appreciate how large infrastructure modernization projects require adaptability and coordination across multiple phases, as demonstrated by Howard County’s experiences managing technological changes, COVID-19 impacts, and program iterations.
Contributor/Source
Nicholas D’Angelo-Project Engineer
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