Albany Utilities reports 88% AMI deployment; 12% of meters remain amid access and safety issues

Albany Utilities staff told the Utility Board on April 10 that the systemwide rollout of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) is about 88% complete and that the remaining roughly 11,000 exchanges are concentrated where technicians face hard access, unsafe meter cabinets or customer refusal.

Kendall Hodge, staff member leading the deployment update, told the board, “There is no opt out option…At the end of deployment, all the utility customers will have an AMI meter.” He said Albany has exchanged 78,720 meters of an active population now listed at 89,831, and that staff removed roughly 2,116 inactive or abandoned meter records during final account scrubbing.

The board heard a commodity-level breakdown: water accounts total 38,861 with 32,718 exchanged (about 84%); electric accounts total 34,805 with 32,331 exchanged (93%); and gas had 2,494 remaining from a larger total. H2O (the water contractor identified in the presentation) will perform about 3,700 of the remaining water replacements; Albany Utilities staff will handle larger meter sizes and complicated installs.

Staff described three recurring obstacles to finishing deployment: (1) meter-cabinet conditions that pose safety risks, (2) homes or properties hard to access or where residents…