Smart meters are helping conserve water in Amarillo (and across Texas)

Smart meters are helping conserve water in Amarillo (and across Texas) Posted on October 21, 2026

Water conservation starts with knowing where the water goes.

For Texas water utilities, that means accurate information about consumption is more than a billing requirement. Water consumption data can help utilities identify potential leaks and unusual spikes in use and give customers a clearer picture of how much water they are using. Smart water meters provide that information.

Unlike conventional meters that primarily record how much water passes through a service connection, smart meters can collect and communicate more detailed consumption data. Utilities can use that information to monitor usage, identify potential leaks, and manage meters remotely. That makes smart metering more than a billing upgrade-it's a way for utilities to turn water-use measurements into actionable information and take a more informed approach to managing a critical resource for Texas communities.

What is a smart water meter?

A smart water meter does more than measure the volume of water passing through a service connection. It also creates a stream of information that utilities can use to understand consumption and help customers identify potential problems. The City of Amarillo's old metering infrastructure provided only one read per customer per month, and that data was collected through manual and drive-by meter reading-a labor intensive process that resulted in minimal data.

With almost $30 million in financial assistance from the Texas Water Development Board, the city undertook a major upgrade of its water-metering system by replacing more than 70,000 meters with advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). The project is designed to improve billing accuracy and customer service while giving the city and its customers better access to water-use information.

Amarillo installed new meters that use solid-state electromagnetic technology to measure water flow without a mechanical measuring element inside the flow tube. That design allows the meter to measure water flow while maintaining accuracy over its service life by replacing a simple mechanical readout with an electronic register. That register can record consumption data and provide flow-direction information, empty-pipe detection, and configurable data logging.

The new meters can log up to 120 days of hourly consumption data and support remote monitoring, management, and diagnosis. In other words, the meter becomes part of a larger information system. The physical device measures the water, while the communications and data infrastructure make those measurements accessible and useful to the utility.

What does that mean for the City of Amarillo? Conventional meters answer a basic question: How much water was used? Meanwhile, smart meters help answer additional questions: When was it used? Was the flow unusual? Could there be a leak?

How smart meters work

The value of a smart meter comes after it takes a measurement. As water moves through the meter, its flow is measured electronically. The meter records that information on an hourly basis and makes it available to a utility through an automated metering system. Instead of relying on periodic readings, utility staff can access more detailed information about consumption and changes in flow.

This changes the utility's relationship with meter data. Instead of receiving a reading and moving on to the next billing cycle, utility personnel can use consumption information to investigate what is happening in the system. It gives utilities and customers a more granular understanding of consumption, creating an opportunity to identify water loss and respond before it continues.

From meter readings to actionable information

With smart metering, utilities can use consumption data to identify conditions that require attention. For example, a sudden increase in flow can point to a broken pipe or other abnormal conditions, while continuous consumption can indicate a downstream leak. Reverse flow can signal another problem within the service connection. Smart meters can flag these conditions automatically and give utility staff a reason to investigate, rather than waiting for the next scheduled reading.

Low-flow measurement matters, too. Small leaks can be difficult to identify when a meter does not accurately register low volumes of water. The meters that Amarillo is using are designed to begin registering flow at 0.03 gallons per minute and to measure applicable low flows within a specified ±3% accuracy range.

For the city, those capabilities can change the economics of leak detection.

Instead of discovering water loss only after a customer reports a problem or a meter reading reveals unexpectedly high consumption, staff have another source of information to help identify potential problems early. The technology makes water use more visible-and turns that visibility into action.

How municipalities deploy smart meters

Installing smart meters is not simply a matter of replacing one type of meter with another. The meters must work as part of a larger communications and data-management system.

The first layer is physical deployment. Utilities replace existing meters at individual service connections with meters capable of electronically recording and communicating consumption information. The next layer is communications, because smart meters need a way to get data back to the utility. So, Amarillo installed advanced metering infrastructure: communication network hardware and software and a meter data management system. The smart meters support remote reading, monitoring, and management, and with AMI, two-way communication can also support remote configuration and updates.

That infrastructure creates a different operating model.

With the infrastructure the city installed, Amarillo can now gather meter information remotely instead of sending personnel to manually collect readings. Data can then be incorporated into the city's billing and operational systems, where staff can use it to monitor consumption and investigate potential problems.

But smart meter deployment comes with costs. Installation expenses are considerable for advanced metering infrastructure projects. Interoperability between different systems and communications technologies can also complicate implementation. A municipal smart-meter project like the one in Amarillo is best viewed as an infrastructure investment rather than a simple equipment upgrade.

Amarillo puts smart metering into practice

The Amarillo City Council approved the contract to replace more than 70,000 city water meters with an AMI system in 2021. The project was described by city officials as one of the more significant infrastructure upgrades in the city's history.

The project was rolled out in phases, starting in 2022. Phase I began with approximately 1,000 installations. Phase II began in November 2023, and the program reached completion citywide this year. For Amarillo, accuracy was a central part of the upgrade, because the digital meters provide a high level of accuracy for measuring water use while giving customers access to additional consumption data.

The project illustrates the broader potential of smart metering for Texas municipalities. A meter replacement program can simultaneously modernize billing, improve access to consumption information, and give utilities another source of information for responding to problems.

Why smart meters matter for Texas water conservation

Ultimately, the value of smart meters comes down to visibility of the information they generate. Texas utilities need to understand how much water customers are using and when that use changes. A smart meter provides a more detailed record of consumption while giving utilities another way to identify conditions that may warrant attention. And more detailed consumption information gives residents a clearer picture of their water use.

That creates a feedback loop-the utility measures water, the system communicates the information, the utility or customer identifies an issue, and that information leads to action.

Amarillo's project demonstrates how these pieces come together at municipal scale. Its AMI deployment is intended to improve accuracy and customer access to consumption information while helping the city respond to potential issues and support conservation.

When water managers can see problems sooner and customers can better understand their consumption, conservation becomes a more measurable and actionable process. And as the state's communities manage growing demands on water supplies, tools like smart meters that improve measurement and reveal water loss can help utilities across the state make every drop count.

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