Team to Replace Washington, D.C. Water Meters

Driven by the need to replace aging, inaccurate water meters, the District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority (WASA) has awarded North America's largest water utility fixed-network radio frequency (RF) system implementation to the team of ABB Water Meters (ABB), United Metering and Hexagram.

ABB's $11 million portion of the $36 million, three-year project, represents approximately 130,000 new ABB absolute encoder water meters. All meters will be equipped with Hexagram transmitters and the fixed network data collection system will be integrated with WASA's customer information and billing system. United Metering will manage the WASA project and perform equipment installation.

WASA's analysis indicated that its installed base of residential and commercial meters, many more than 25 years old, require significant maintenance. "As part of our ongoing capital improvement program, we've always viewed this project as an operational excellence initiative," said Jerry Johnson, WASA General Manager. "The revenue improvement we will see from meter replacement covers the cost of the program. The AMR technology from ABB enables WASA to both improve operations and provide better service to its customers in terms of measurement and billing accuracy and timeliness. The keys to selecting the ABB/United Metering/Hexagram Team were past performance on similar environments and the strength of their technology."

Joakim Weidemanis, ABB Water Meters President, summarized the project strengths brought to WASA, "We're very excited about WASA's decision. By partnering with the ABB/United Metering/Hexagram Team, WASA harnesses the power of market-leading, proven technology, knowledge, experience and teamwork."

Source: ABB