Minneapolis city employees are replacing 46,000 water meter transmitters in homes and businesses after they began to fail within a few years of installation, in a fix that has cost the city about $2 million so far.

City workers have already switched out the transmitters in about 17,000 Minneapolis homes since April, and plan to finish the remaining ones by 2027.

In 2017, the city began a five-year process of replacing over 100,000 old water meters citywide, and in doing so, also upgraded the communication devices attached to them with a new system of relaying water usage to the city.

Rather than continue to get meter readings by having city workers drive vans around the city collecting them via a radio system, the new transmitters could send meter readings using cell signals via data collection units mounted on traffic poles. It was touted as a way for residents to get real-time meter readings and alerts about plumbing leaks, and reduce the city's vehicle emissions.

The replacement process was slated to take five years, but within a few years, the transmitters began failing, rendering them unable to relay water usage data. Their batteries were expected to last 20 years, but some began dying within weeks of installation, while others have lasted seven years so far.

"It didn't work out the way the company that was installing these [Aclara Technologies] said it was going to work," said Brian Olson, assistant superintendent at water distribution for the city of Minneapolis.

Provided, City of Minneapolis
The new water meters that were installed by the city a few years ago.

Aclara did not respond to a request for comment.

The batteries are embedded in the transmitters and can't just be changed; workers had to go back to homes and businesses and replace the whole transmitter.

Battery failures

Aclara Technologies won a 10-year, $16.5 million contract to install 47,000 residential water meters and transmitters in 2017, when Betsy Hodges was mayor, according to city documents.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the city to pause in-home installations of the transmitters, at which point city officials realized the batteries were failing fast.

"During that time we were having battery failures in the units we'd just installed in the house," Olson said.

About 46,000 of the transmitters had been installed by then, but city officials calculated that it would be cheaper to stop installing them and go back to the old radio method, with a different company. That work began in April 2024.

So far, the city has paid Aclara $9.65 million for the goods and services it received, according to Matthew Croaston, spokesman for the public works department.

The devices now being installed will eventually be able to get water readings through Xcel power meters, so vans won't have to drive around the city anymore.

The city aims to swap out all the transmitters before its contract with Aclara expires at the end of 2026. Aclara will continue to service the transmitters until then.

The city had to staff up to do the work: Eight city employees working four 10-hour days a week are working through neighborhoods, swapping out 144 devices per day. It costs about $124 in labor and materials to swap each one out.

"It's a lot of work," Olson said.

Bills based on estimates

The city of Toronto ran into the same problem, only on a much bigger scale, and is now trying to replace 470,000 water meter transmitters in homes and businesses for millions of dollars. The dead batteries led to water billing problems there.

Minneapolis water officials say when the batteries began failing here, the city began to estimate water bills based on past usage, and make appointments to get into the property and change out the transmitter.

Out of the nearly 28,000 old transmitters still installed throughout the city, 690 aren't working properly, requiring the city to estimate those water bills, water officials say.

Some Minneapolis residents were wary of the newfangled transmitters from the start — whether due to privacy concerns or health concerns about radio waves — and opted out. Thirteen of them, to be exact, chose to pay $12 per month for touchpad readers on the side of the house that are manually read by meter staff.

Those property owners won't be affected by the massive changeout, since the new meter reading systems also use radio frequency technology.