When Hurricane Frances arrived in Palm Beach County in September nobody expected there to be 100+ MPH winds for almost 48 hours without relief. Frances caused huge damage in the area as it drifted through, destroying roofs, buildings, giant trees and thousands of telephone poles. At Lake Worth Village six homes were completely destroyed, many lost roofs and porches and at this writing, large trees still lay on top of many homes.

The last thing Red and Shirley Wiley(Village Managers) expected when they got power back 9 days later, was that the 831 AMCO water meters with Hexagram fixed network radio, which was installed this summer, would report readings from every meter, twice a day during the entire time power was out. The single Data Collector Unit (DCU) mounted on a thirty foot pole in the center of the property was still completely intact and the battery backup had collected the readings and saved them to send when the cell service was up and running.

The AMR system project completed in Lake Worth Village this summer was lead by The Avanti Company using AMCO C700 Water Meters, Hexagram Star System Fixed Network Radio technology and was installed by USI Energy Inc. The project included installing meter boxes, back flow preventers, pressure relief valves, meters, transmitters and the collection and reading hardware and software.

On the final day of installation, USI Energy had installed 831 meters and received 831 readings that evening. Achieving 100% reads on the first day after installation was a tremendous accomplishment and speaks highly of AMCO Water Meters, Hexagram, USI Energy and The Avanti Company for working together with the customer to implement a successful AMR system.

A personal Thank You is due to Lake Worth Village and their amazing staff for the cooperation and assistance in making this a successful project. We all wish you the very best in your clean up efforts in the Village!