Oxnard Water Automated Meter Reading (AMR) Program

Leveraging advanced technology is just one example of the many ways the City of Oxnard�s Water Division is demonstrating its commitment to "meeting the challenges of tomorrow, through better planning today". On May 10, 2001, the Water Division unveiled the highly successful Automated Meter Reading (AMR) Pilot Demonstration Program and officially kicked off future phases of this exciting technological solution, earning the City of Oxnard the distinction of being the first City in Ventura county and the largest City in the State of California to introduce Automated Meter Reading.

Introducing this advanced technology has also provided the benefit of being able to "work smarter, and not harder," which is extremely important in this day in age of having to do more with less. The biggest benefit of this program is by far the timesavings gained in reading meters. Once installed, meter readings are accomplished by simply driving past the meter location. The new system is expected to reduce the amount of time necessary to hand read meters by a factor of 25 to 1. A typical route of 500 meters would normally take one individual about eight (8) hours to hand read. Using advanced AMR technology, this same route can be accomplished in about 20 minutes. Time which can then be reinvested into other Water Division programs that require more manual labor to succeed.

The meter reading route is downloaded into a mobile laptop computer, which in turn is connected to the Vehicle Transceiver Unit, or VXU, which uses Spread Spectrum Radio waves to establish a communication link between the meter box installed mobile transceiver units, or MXU�s, with the VXU. In the time it takes to safely drive by each individual meter box installation, the MXU is woken and instructed to transmit its meter register data, along with system diagnostics to the VXU.

Beginning in fiscal year 2002, the Water Services Program has plans to replace approximately 10-percent of the City�s existing meter inventory, which represents over 3,000 meter installations, with the new Automated Meter Reading technology.

For more information, review our AMR Program Demonstration news release and visit our events page.

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