Customers across all six communities described the same fundamental gap: they cannot see their usage between bills, cannot anticipate what their next bill will be, and cannot always connect their conservation efforts to outcomes. LADWP’s efforts to deploy AMI throughout its service territory has the potential to be the single most important infrastructure investment for closing this gap. LADWP has begun its multi-year AMI deployment for the power system, with water planned to follow. But full AMI deployment will take five to eight years (or more) for power, with water timelines still undefined.
However, customers experiencing bill unpredictability today cannot afford to wait. LADWP already offers meaningful tools that offer “AMI-like” capabilities, including the Flume smart home water monitor rebate and the Level Pay budget billing program. But awareness and eligibility limits constrain their reach.
The LIPA/PSEG Long Island case study demonstrates that AMI’s full value can be realized when customer-facing capabilities are planned and deployed in parallel with the meters themselves, and that planning for customer benefits as an afterthought once installation is complete is insufficient. LADWP is well positioned to realize this value and can use its competitive advantage as a joint water-power system deploying AMI now to learn from each system’s unique and distinctive offerings.
Opportunities for LADWP to consider:
- Develop an AMI customer-benefit roadmap alongside the deployment schedule, identifying which customer capabilities (e.g. mid-cycle usage notifications, bill projections, high-usage and tier-threshold alerts, etc.) will launch at which deployment milestones
- Prioritize early AMI deployment use cases for customer segments most vulnerable to bill shock, paired with proactive outbound outreach when unusual usage is detected
- Design AMI data integration into planned customer system, billing system, and bill redesign efforts from the outset, so customers experience these investments as one coherent improvement rather than disconnected systems
While AMI is being planned for and deployed:
- Continue to aggressively promote the Flume device and expand Flume eligibility beyond single-family accounts to “small” multi-family accounts (2–4 units, including single family homes with ADUs)
- Expand promotion of Level Pay through targeted, segment-tested communications, building on learnings since the program inception with additional multi-lingual explainer videos and proactive customer service outreach (e.g., in-call cross promotions)
- Conduct outreach pilots to certain vulnerable segments when abnormal bills are detected (similar to outbound call efforts when Level Pay participants’ usage exceeds certain thresholds)
- Pilot direct-install or self-install home electricity monitoring options (e.g., smart outlets, energy monitoring devices, smart breakers, or smart electric panels) for households with non AMI meters