Columbia, Missouri Weighs $42 Million Ameresco-Led Smart Meter Overhaul For Electric And Water

The City of Columbia, Missouri is moving toward a final decision on a $42.1 million Advanced Metering Infrastructure program that would replace 53,992 electric meters and replace or retrofit 52,747 water meters across the municipal utility’s service territory. City staff presented the proposal at a Columbia City Council and contracts are expected to reach the council for final consideration in September. If approved, installations would begin in March 2027.

The project would be delivered through a turnkey contract with Ameresco, the Massachusetts-based energy solutions firm, and would bring two-way metering to a utility that still reads most meters manually.

Aging Electromechanical Fleet Drives The Business Case

Columbia Water and Light currently operates no smart meters on its electric system. The city’s own documentation notes that existing meters lack two-way communication, do not record interval data, and cannot report a customer’s loss of power, a limitation dating to an automatic meter reading rollout that began in 1996.

Staff identified manual reads, meters past their useful life, dead or stuck equipment, operational inefficiencies, and limited data transparency as the core deficiencies the program is meant to resolve. The proposed remedy pairs new solid-state electric and water meters with a citywide AMI communications network and meter data management software integrated into the city’s existing billing and customer portal systems.

Ameresco’s Scope Spans Audit, Network Build, And Verification

Columbia selected Ameresco in March 2025 and amended the agreement in August 2025 to cover evaluation and development of an AMI solution for both the electric and water utilities. The vendor audited the city’s metering systems, reviewed meter databases, performed field surveys, and evaluated operations before defining the recommended scope.

The roughly $42.1 million one-time cost includes a $41.97 million turnkey contract with Ameresco, software integration, and three years of measurement and verification services. Annual software costs would start near $600,000 and rise about 3 percent per year.

Electric meters would be swapped first, over roughly 18 months, with water meters following over two to three years because many water meters sit in buried locations or deep pits requiring additional work.

Debt Financing Against A Projected $71 Million Return

The city plans to fund the program through a loan or special obligation bonds, with debt service spread over 10 years and annual payments climbing toward about $5 million.

Staff projections put combined savings and additional revenue above $71 million over 15 years, driven by eliminated meter-reading routes, improved billing accuracy, reduced water loss, and tighter revenue collection. Ameresco representatives acknowledged that customers whose meters currently under-register could see higher bills once accurate devices are installed.

Customer-Facing Gains: Hourly Data, Leak Alerts, Automatic Outage Detection

Residents would gain online access to hourly and daily electric and water usage, automated leak notifications by email, and faster resolution of service inquiries and billing disputes.

The operational shift is most pronounced in outage management. The utility today depends on customer phone calls to learn of power interruptions, while water leaks can go undetected until the next monthly read; the AMI system would surface both automatically.

Columbia Joins A Late-Cycle Wave Of Municipal AMI Adopters

Roughly two-thirds of US utilities already operate AMI, leaving holdouts like Columbia under growing pressure to modernize. The scale of recent municipal programs underscores how mainstream the technology has become: the San Antonio Water System completed the largest US water meter replacement, swapping more than 604,000 meters for about $200 million, finishing a year early and under budget.

At roughly $395 per endpoint across about 106,700 meters, Columbia’s all-in cost sits within the typical range for combined electric and water AMI deployments that include network, software, and installation.