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County says AMI meter rollout improved revenue recovery and leak detection; flags QTS billing as resolved
Summary
Fayette County staff reported the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) project replaced thousands of legacy meters, cut manual reads to near zero, increased leak alerts and customer engagement, and identified large construction-period usage for QTS that generated a $147,000 charge which the developer paid at the higher construction rate.
Water System Business Operations Manager Carrie Gibby and Water System Director Vanessa Tigert told the Board on May 13 that the AMI meter deployment was essentially complete, replacing roughly 33,000 cellular meters and reducing drive-by meters to about 52.
Gibby said the average meter age dropped from more than 17 years to about three years after deployment, improving accuracy and revenue recovery. The system generates roughly 150 leak alerts per month and staff estimate those alerts have helped save about 3 million gallons of water by prompting earlier customer repairs.
Tigert and Rapson explained the QTS billing issue: when the county converted legacy meters to AMI, it discovered multi‑month billed volumes for 13 meter connections on a looped system; the county issued a bill of approximately $147,000 at a construction rate (not the lower retail rate), and QTS paid the bill immediately. Rapson said that while construction usage was large in absolute terms, it represented under 1% of county production and was largely related to filling/flushing closed-loop systems, dust control and irrigation, and construction activity including concrete plants and truck wash-downs.
"The perception that QTS had secretly connected meters or hidden anything was not accurate," Rapson said, adding that the County’s Public Information Office would coordinate with QTS communications staff to ensure accurate public messaging.
Staff also reported about 3,200 customer portal registrations (EyeOnWater), roughly 10% of accounts, and a 99% communication-health metric for the AMI endpoints at the time of the presentation. Remaining drive-by meter conversions and endpoint tamper alerts were noted as minor operational items.
The AMI project was presented as improving customer service, operational efficiency, and billing accuracy while providing a tool for earlier problem detection and revenue recovery.
