Utility Supply pitches hourly reads and Mach 10 meters to Atlanta council

A representative from Utility Supply reviewed options for modernizing Atlanta’s water-metering system, including adding a water-tower-mounted antenna and gateway to capture hourly reads from the town’s existing radio-read meters and an option to replace older mechanical meters with Mach 10 solid-state meters.

Mr. Christiansen, the sales representative, said the antenna option can be installed to collect reads hourly without changing existing meters and that the newer Mach 10 meters offer longer accuracy and a full warranty structure. He described practical benefits: earlier detection of continuous-use events, dashboard reporting of high users, two-year archival of meter history (versus the town’s current rolling three-month window), and automatic alerts for battery or misread conditions. “It takes your metering from once a month to once an hour,” he said, describing the antenna-plus-gateway option.

Council members asked about warranty terms, data-storage costs and customer impacts if meters were changed. The presenter said the Mach 10-style meters carry a 20-year warranty (10 years full, 10 years prorated) and that annual data-storage costs would increase from roughly $3,800 to about $5,000 under the hourly-read model; he also noted the antenna option would not change customer bills unless the town replaced meters. The representative provided some preliminary dollar figures during the presentation and agreed to supply a clarified, written quote and scaled pricing for box and pallet quantities.

Next steps: the company will provide written quotes (box and pallet pricing) and clearer breakdowns of installation, hardware and annual storage fees; council staff asked for time to compare market alternatives before a procurement decision.