AMI Update: Reaching New Milestones

Why is 96.44% a significant number?

Because it shows the progress Louisville Water is making on the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) project, which began in 2020 and is well on its way to making sure all our customers benefit from advanced meters.

Contractor installs AMI receiver
A contractor installs an AMI receiver.

These meters have wireless communication capabilities to send data to Louisville Water receivers, which means advanced meters facilitate monthly billing and make it easy for customers to monitor their water consumption through the Pure Connect portal.

Before we explain the significance of 96.44%, consider the milestones that Louisville Water reached in the project last year: 103,846 AMI endpoints were installed for a total of 238,137 since the project began. This means more than two thirds of our customers now have advanced meters. We also converted 73,465 Jefferson County customers to monthly billing in 2023, for an overall total of 144,331 customers — about half — now receiving monthly bills. (Louisville Water is currently in the planning stage to expand the AMI project to Oldham and Bullitt County customers.)

Occasionally, the weather can be a challenge for the AMI project team. If we have extreme weather that affects equipment, such as January’s arctic cold snap, it can affect the Read Rate — a calculation of how many endpoints are sharing data on any given day, meaning it’s the percentage of advanced meters that are being read on that day.


And that’s where 96.44% comes in: “It’s our highest one-day Read Rate,” said AMI Manager Scott Clark. He pointed out that it’s getting close to the numbers Louisville Water has specified in its contract with Itron, the AMI company helping us with the installations. 


“The contractual Read Rate numbers by the end of the project are 99% for a one-day Read Rate and 99.5% for a three-day Read Rate,” Clark said. “Itron is committed to meeting those contractual percentages, and they are currently mitigating the endpoints to replace or exchange non-functioning equipment. Because of this effort, and the effort from our own staff, we reached the highest one-day read rate recently.”

Louisville Water plans to finish the project this spring. It will be a good example of the company’s commitment to providing the best customer experience and the most efficient operations. For instance, before the AMI project began, Louisville Water would need to “roll a truck” so an employee could read the meter whenever a new homeowner moved in and the previous homeowner moved out. With AMI, employees can read the meter remotely in their Louisville Water office, which has already eliminated more than 21,300 “truck rolls.”

If you would like to check your meter upgrade status, please use our online tool.