Advanced Metering Infrastructure

The Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) project is coming to your house or business soon! Here is some background on the project:

What is AMI? Advanced Metering Infrastructure is the latest technology in the evolution of the outdated and inefficient "manual read" technology, which is where a meter reader comes to a house or business and manually reads a water meter. 

Specifically, the City of Benicia will replace all older commercial and residential water meters (which currently account for roughly 85 percent of all meters) with new ones. Meter Transmission Units (MTUs), which will collect water data hourly and will be installed at every household and commercial site. There will also be 26 Data Collector Units (DCUs) to transmit this data to a cloud-based computer system.

Most importantly, the City of Benicia will offer an enhanced customer web portal through Water Smart, which will enable all water users to access their real-time and historic water consumption data from any smart phone or computer. It will also enable customers to set notifications for abnormal usage alerts to help keep customers informed about excess water usage or potential leaks in the system.