Albany utility staff report 88% AMI meter rollout; remaining exchanges slowed by access, safety and repair issues

Albany Utility staff told the Utility Board on an AMI (advanced metering infrastructure) progress report that the city has exchanged 78,720 of 89,831 meters — about 88% complete — and has roughly 11,111 meter exchanges remaining as the city works through safety, access and repair issues.

The update, delivered by Kendall Hodge, focused on the remaining workload by commodity and the operational and customer-notification steps staff are taking to finish deployment. “There is no opt out option, right, for receiving — for not receiving an AMI meter,” Hodge said, adding that the city is using certified letters, contractor support and targeted repairs to complete the program.

Hodge said the change in the total meter population from earlier figures (previously quoted as 91,947) reflects account scrubbing that removed inactive or abandoned meters from the exchange list. Staff reported commodity-level progress as follows: water — 38,861 accounts total, 32,718 exchanged (about 84% complete); the second commodity listed in the presentation had 16,165 accounts with 13,671 exchanges to date (about 85%); electric — 34,805 accounts with 32,331 exchanged (about 93%); overall completion was presented as about 88% as of the date of the report.

Staff described the remaining work as concentrated in a few categories: larger commercial meters that the utility itself must swap, meter cabinets in poor material condition that require customer-side repairs, and hard-to-access or unresponsive locations. For water specifically, staff said about 6,143 water meters remain;…