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10 <br />AMI Feasibility Report I Client Name: City of Santa Ana <br />prohibitive because of the significant cost of additional meter reading resources and changes to the <br />billing systems. <br />With the implementation of AMI, City will have all of the data required to support monthly billing <br />for 100 percent of its customers. There are no incremental costs to obtaining the monthly reads by <br />utilizing an AMI system. There are additional costs related to the processing and postage on the <br />increased number of bills delivered each month, but these costs can be lessened through an <br />aggressive program to migrate customers to electronic bill payment. Customers should be <br />encouraged to sign up for paperless bills and online payment when they are sent communications <br />to sign up for AMI usage data customer portal. <br />Studies and industry experience has shown that customers prefer monthly billing to bi-monthly <br />billing. This is true for all utilities, including water. For some customers with financial constraints, it <br />is easier for them to pay the smaller monthly bills than the larger, less periodic bills. In addition, <br />customers are able to pay the entire monthly bill, resulting in fewer partial payments. This would <br />be true even for City with its relatively low water rates and residential bills. The delivery of more <br />frequent bills also supports improved awareness of water usage and costs, and more rapidly <br />identifies when usage has changed; this change could be alerted through a leak notification or may <br />appear as a valid albeit large bill increase. <br />In terms of the timing of the bi-monthly to monthly billing, Black & Veatch suggests this not be <br />performed in tandem with the implementation of the AMI system. Installing new meters and <br />making changes to the rates or billing structure have proven problematic with other utility AMI <br />programs. Although the movement from bi-monthly to monthly billing results in smaller actual <br />bills, the availability of the transition is tied to AMI meter deployment and transition to billing. <br />There is normally a lag of several months between the new AMI enabled meter installation and <br />when the meter is transitioned from manual to AMI read to allow for full routes to be cut over in an <br />organized fashion. Entire routes would need to be transitioned,'and the impact on the billing system <br />would need to be analyzed to determine how to minimize and avoid billing pitfalls. <br />4.2 METER READING <br />The City's work force includes two part-time and three fulltime meter reading positions. The meter <br />readers read the approximately 22,250 water meters each month. These resources and the <br />supporting infrastructure for them constitute a major ongoing expenditure for the meter reading. In <br />addition to the base wages for these individuals, there are overheads, benefits, supervision, <br />training, vehicles, tools, radios, handheld devices, etc., that are all required for them to perform <br />their work. The elimination of these manual meter reading costs is a key business benefit of <br />metering automation. Automation also improves the accuracy of meter reads and timely availability <br />of data for billing; in addition, hourly meter reads are used on the customer web portal to show <br />water usage. Figure 3 show the meter density map for the City. It shows that certain areas have a <br />high density of meters as compared to others. <br />25G-128 <br />