Wireless Water Meters

It is the mission of the Department of Public Works (DPW) to provide the most economical and reliable service available to residents and as such, the DPW is in the process of upgrading the Town's water meter infrastructure with Advanced Metering Interface (AMI) equipment. This new system will allow the DPW  to remotely read water meters rather than its current practice of manually reading each water meter in town. The new equipment will also allow town water customers to monitor household water consumption through a web or mobile interface. This system upgrade was approved by 2017 Annual Town Meeting but was unfortunately delayed due to unforeseen circumstances. It is now set to be online by 2022.

Benefits

By collecting water usage data on an almost immediate basis, the DPW will be able to identify leaks and faulty meters much sooner, and will also be able to better identify unaccounted for water. Also, because the need for manual readings will be eliminated, DPW personnel can be placed on other projects.

Residents with town water can also access their household water usage information through a web or mobile interface to monitor household consumption, identify leaks much sooner, anticipate billing costs, and can better understand household usage in order to promote water conservation practices at home. 

Specifically, the upgrade will:

• Replace approximately 3,700 of Weston's existing water meters to increase meter accuracy 
• Provides the infrastructure for the DPW to achieve its goal of efficiency and best environmental practices that support programs focused on reducing the consumption of natural resources. These include:
  • significantly enhancing service to water customers, including faster response and more efficient customer service, as well as on-demand move-in / move-out remote meter reads
  • allows DPW personnel to monitor individual and town-wide water usage and configures alerts to potential infrastructure or residential issues (i.e. leaks)
  • simplify the billing process
• The AMI system offers a secure, web and mobile Consumer Portal for water customers that has timely and accurate consumption information. This interface allows users:
  • to control water usage, costs, and advance personal “Green” initiatives 
  • to access their own consumption information and billing data
  • to access usage reports on yearly, monthly, and an hourly basis
  • to set budgets and water conservation goals
  • to access management tools such as setting usage parameters, either in dollars and/or volumetric units, that trigger email/text alerts when usage exceeds custom parameters
• The Consumer Portal also 
  • correlates consumption data with meteorological local temperature and precipitation
  • prepares reports in graphical and tabular views for reading consumption and billing approximations coinciding with date ranges selected by users
  • enables pre-payment of billing
  • compares current usage to previous periods