Wellington selection committee to negotiate with Badger for cellular AMI; schedules interviews for installation bidders

The Wellington selection committee voted May 22 to open contract negotiations with Badger for the village’s planned cellular advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) system and set interviews for three installation contractors to complete the meter replacement project.

Project goals and why it matters: The village is seeking to replace more than 20,000 water meters—more than 95% of which are more than 15 years old—with a networked AMI system intended to restore meter accuracy, reduce “non-revenue” water and give staff more frequent meter reads for leak detection and customer service. Brad Wallach, Wellington’s project manager, said bench testing of about 400 meters showed readings “anywhere from 80% right up to fully compliant,” and that the village “is losing somewhere around $600,000 a year from under registering water passing through the meter.”

What the committee reviewed: Consultants from eSource summarized five AMI proposals and three bids for installation services. The AMI technology bids were from Badger, Empire (proposing Master Meter technology), and National Metering Services (proposing Neptune/R900). Installation bids came from HST Utility, National Metering Services, and RTS (Envocore). The eSource presentation explained the two-part procurement approach: (1) the technology package (meters, cellular endpoints, network/MDMS and customer portal) and (2) the field installation contract to swap meters in the ground and perform associated site work.

Technical choices discussed: Wellington staff and consultants reviewed the tradeoffs among meter technologies, network architectures and data cadence: - Meter type: the team recommended mechanical disc meters for the small residential sizes included in this procurement (3/4 inch to 1 inch standard in the bid). Consultants noted Badger…