The City of Plano water department has reverted to manually reading customers’ water meters after a software glitch sidelined the city’s smart meter system.
The issue is not with the meters themselves but with the technology used to transmit the meter readings to the city, according to Steve Stoler, director of media relations for the City of Plano, reported The Dallas Morning News.
In 2019, the city contracted with Core & Main LP to supply transmission units from Aclara, which would send customer meter readings to data collectors for monthly billing and service transfers. The four-year contract cost the city more than $10 million.
The units are advertised as providing long-lasting performance with a 20-year lithium battery. Even so, as early as the fall of 2023, some units’ batteries were depleted and failed to send data. After a year-long investigation, the vendor sent a software fix in November 2024 to address the problem.
However, the update was defective, causing the failure of more than 73,000 transmission units. Similar issues have been reported in other cities using the Aclara technology, including Minneapolis and New York City.
On February 10, the Plano City Council approved emergency funding for temporary staff to read the city’s meters manually. The city approved $345,000 for the current fiscal year and $420,000 for next year, with the funds coming from the water and sewer department budget.
It is unclear how long it will take to replace the transmission units in all the meters, but the city is talking with the vendor and Aclara about recouping the extra costs related to the system failure.
In the meantime, temporary city workers will manually read the meters for each water system connection in the city.