Automatic Benefits

For Scott Jellison, it’s all about credibility. He knows that the customers of The Metropolitan District, a utility that provides drinking water and sewage services to eight communities located near Hartford, CT, will be less likely to doubt the accuracy of their water bills now that his district is relying on automatic meter reading (AMR) to do away with estimated billing. Estimated billing had always been a sore spot in this district that serves about 110,000 customers, says Jellison, its chief operating officer. That’s because the water meters of a large number of this area’s home and business customers are located inside their buildings. The winters in Connecticut can be harsh. To prevent freezing, many meters are not located outside. That often meant that the district’s meter readers could not gain access to these meters. They had to hope that someone was home, and willing to let them inside, when they stopped by to read these meters. If no one was available? The Metropolitan District had to send out the never-appreciated estimated bill.

That is now becoming a thing of the past. Starting in 2005, The Metropolitan District begins installing the AMR system, developed by Itron, a global provider of solid-state meters. The second phase of this project is due to wrap up in August 2010. Once it does, district employees will be able to access meter information without leaving their vehicles from all but 10,000 of The Metropolitan District’s customers. The district is using a drive-by AMR system. Employees simply drive down the streets of their service areas in a computer-equipped van labeled with The Metropolitan District logo. As they drive by customers’ homes and businesses, radio devices attached to these customers’ meters beam their water-usage information directly to their onboard computers.

This eliminates human error and greatly speeds up the meter-reading process. And, just as importantly, it eliminates estimated billing. Employees of the district no longer have to gain access to the homes of customers whose meters are located indoors. They simply have to drive through these customers’ neighborhoods. “We have done a lot of PR [public relations] for this program. We want to spread the word to our customers about what we’re hoping to accomplish here,” says Jellison. “Say you have 7,000 customers in one town alone who get estimated bills. These estimated bills often create phone calls. That’s 7,000 phone calls that we have eliminated having to make to or receive from customers who are concerned about their estimation. The AMR system eliminates unnecessary phone calls. It allows our customer service representatives to be proactive on other issues.”

Jellison and his fellow workers at Connecticut’s Metropolitan District are far from the only municipal officials turning to AMR, alternatively known as Automated Metering Infrastructure or Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), to make meter reading less of a chore. A growing number of municipalities are turning to AMR systems to eliminate estimated billing, detect leaks or other problems more quickly, and transform from quarterly to monthly billing cycles. All of these benefits allow water districts to provide better customer service. And in today’s tough economic times, when municipalities are being asked to justify every dollar they spend, happy customers are not a luxury–they’re a necessity. “An AMI system isn’t just about providing a utility with cost savings,” says Tom Galuska, marketing manager for Sensus, a provider of smart-metering products based in Raleigh, NC. “This is more about what water districts can do to improve their overall system and utility. It’s about what they can do to deliver water and sewer services more effectively and efficiently.”

The good news is that even the weak economy is not preventing municipalities from exploring and committing to AMR/AMI systems. These systems, when used properly, allow water utilities to cut the costs of delivering drinking water and sewage services to their customers. And in today’s dismal economy, the whole “cutting costs” feature has a nice ring to it.

Proactive in Ohio
The city of Gahanna, OH, is no stranger to the new world of metering technology. Last summer, it began installation of a new water management system, FlexNet, from Sensus. This system transmits water usage data from households and businesses to the City’s utility operations center through an exclusive FCC-licensed frequency that broadcasts at 2 watts of power. Information is beamed to the utility at an extremely quick pace. When the installation is complete, the new system will serve 12,000 homes in the City. Already, it’s brought positive results. Since installation began in July 2009, the water management system has detected more than 40 previously unknown leaks in 4,000 homes. By discovering these leaks and repairing them, the utility saved countless dollars in lost water.

These savings, and the increased ability for utility officials to uncover previously hidden system leaks, are two of the main selling points for AMI systems, says Galuska. “This system allows the city to be extremely proactive when it comes to monitoring water usage,” he says. “The city can perform leak detection monitoring, even on the distribution lines coming into, and out of, the utility itself. Utility workers can now proactively find leaks before they become disastrous. That results in a lot of savings every year.”

Utilities can even use the data to make sure that customers are following municipal laws regarding the use of city water. For instance, many municipalities in dry climates institute no-watering days during the hottest and driest days of the summer. Water usage data transmitted by the FlexNet system can identify customers who violate the no-watering rule by watering their grass even if the city is suffering under drought conditions.

In good news for utilities and workers, the installation of AMI systems does not usually result in utility employees losing their jobs. The technology doesn’t replace workers. Instead, utilities can remove their employees from the mundane tasks of walking through their communities jotting down information from water meters. These employees can tackle other, more important jobs, while the AMI or AMR systems handle the capturing of water usage numbers.

Galuska says that thanks to all of these benefits, a greater number of water utilities across the country are exploring AMI systems. This is occurring despite the dismal economy, and the fact that most municipalities are squeezing as much from every dollar as they can. “I am seeing a greater interest in AMI right now,” says Galuska. “There is a greater desire on the part of utility managers, to understand everything that AMI can bring. The ability to really get into the data, the numbers, and to learn exactly how efficiently their system is operating, is usually the tipping point that moves them to go from a walk-by system to an AMI system.”

Many water utilities have had walk-by or drive-by systems for 10 to 15 years, Galuska says, and are now at a crossroads. They have to update their system; they can either keep their current system, or advance to the new technology of an AMI system. “We are seeing many of these customers tell us that their walk-by/drive-by system served them well for a decade, but that now it is time to move up to the next level of technology.”

The challenge for any utility today lies in convincing the budget personnel at their municipality to approve an upgrade to new AMI technology. With the struggling economy, most municipalities are looking for ways to save money. The key is for utility officials to prove that an AMI system, despite the upfront cost, will, ultimately, result in significant savings every year, Galuska says. Old water meters wear down. After a decade of service, they may only accurately measure 90% of the actual water usage of customers. When municipalities upgrade to AMI systems, they’ll immediately see a more accurate measuring of water usage, adds Galuska. This will result in a quick increase in revenue.

And this is just the beginning of the increased efficiencies that come with AMI systems. “You will now be measuring all the water that is being used,” says Galuska. “Some municipalities, because they’ve updated to AMI systems, are going from quarterly to monthly water billing. When they do this, their available cash flow is upped. With AMI systems, utilities gain a greater control and a greater view of the actual water usage of their customers. If they are monitoring their own utility distribution lines through AMI they can watch for a leak and fix it before it becomes a more serious, and costly, problem; they can fix it before they have water loss and a disaster. Utilities become so much more proactive; they save money in the long run.”

Greater Speed, Accuracy
Terry Emery, director of public service with the city of Gahanna, says that the water utility made the move to FlexNet for most of the reasons Galuska mentions: The utility wanted to increase the accuracy of its water bills, find leaks before they became too serious, and save money while doing so. Gahanna, like many utilities, had been relying on a touchpad system: Utility workers would travel through city neighborhoods, inputting the usage numbers from water meters on portable computers they carried with them. This system worked, but it was far from efficient. Utility employees spent too much time entering data into the system and walking neighborhoods. With FlexNet, this has become a thing of the past. “We believed that by going to the FlexNet product, that we would be more accurate when it came to billing and determining customer water use,” says Emery. “The area we were most interested in improving was the monitoring of our water usage. By going to the FlexNet system, we are able to stay on top of water usage much, much better.”

Detecting leaks more efficiently is another benefit of the new system, Emery says. Today, the utility is informing customers of leaks within 24 hours. Under the old touchpad system, finding these leaks would have taken 90 days. The FlexNet system flags the utility on a daily basis when it detects any potential water-loss issues coming from a home or business. The amount of lost water that this can prevent is hard to quantify, but it’s significant.

Emery says the installation of the FlexNet system through the entire city of Gahanna should be completed by the end of 2010. The new system is allowing the city to move from quarterly, to monthly billing. Emery says this is a benefit to the utility’s customers, because instead of facing a quarterly bill that can be as much as $250, customers will instead receive a monthly bill that might be $60 or $70. The total is still the same every quarter, but now customers can pay smaller amounts more frequently, which is less shocking to them than receiving a far-larger bill each quarter.

The city also has big plans for the future of the FlexNet system, adds Emery. Though the city’s not yet ready, the hope is that customers will, one day, be able to log onto the Internet, enter a user name and password, and see exactly how much water they’re using. The utility is waiting on the city to finish its installation of a border-to-border wireless infrastructure. Once this is done, customers will be able to monitor their own water usage from their homes.

The utility will save money in employee costs, thanks to the FlexNet system, Emery says. It can take employees that formerly read meters and move them into other jobs. This allows the utility to fill important positions without having to hire new workers. The utility is also able to better monitor its own system pipes and infrastructure for leaks. “There is a huge potential for loss in our system,” says Emery. “But now we can get a far better handle on this. This can save us a significant amount of money each year.”

A Growing Trend
Gahanna is far from alone, in turning to AMI. The Toho Water Authority in Kissimmee, FL, in January, began its own phased installation of the STAR Network metering infrastructure system from Aclara, the AMI/AMR division of ESCO Technologies Inc. Toho, with its 125,000 water meters, has begun installation with a 5,100-meter pilot program. The utility’s goal is a common one among AMI adaptors: The utility wants to both boost its level of customer service and reduce water lose by detecting leaks and inoperable meters in less time.

Toho officials hope to use their data to provide advice to their customers on how they can change usage patterns to conserve water. Gary Moore, president of Aclara RF Sytems, said, in a written statement, that by incorporating AMI, cities like Toho can look forward to the ability to “provide significant consumption information to consumers, allowing them to actively conserve sustainable resources and lower bills.” Moore points out that AMI systems, like Aclara’s STAR Network, “will significantly improve efficiencies in collecting meter readings and other data from water meters.”

The Toho water system’s meters are located both in pits and above ground. They’re also designed to withstand the sometimes-harsh weather conditions in Florida, where humidity and frequent rainstorms can damage electronic equipment. The system’s meter transmitters are mounted to the underside of composite pit lids and connected to the underground meters. These are hermetically sealed. Because of this, they’re less likely to malfunction from high humidity or flooding. The data-collection units, mounted strategically throughout the city, have been designed to survive sustained hurricane-force winds of 150 miles an hour–a necessity there.

Improving Service in Connecticut
Allen Sayles, account executive for Itron, says he has worked with The Metropolitan District in Connecticut for five years, helping the district fine-tune its AMR capabilities and plans. Today, he is helping to coordinate the AMR implementation taking place in the district. He estimated that Itron is connecting roughly 3,200 properties a month to the new AMR system. The goal is to have the current phase of the AMR project completed in August. “Typically with our AMR solutions, customers are looking to reduce their estimated bills and increase their billing accuracy,” says Sayles. “Many of the towns we are going into are replacing a system where they are still keying their reads into a handheld device. Read rates of 99.7%, 99.8% are common. That lets them go to a low level of estimated bills. They receive a lot fewer calls into their call centers from customers. They are not sending people out to verify reads. They are eliminating the amount of time they are spending in the field and making things easier on their customers at the same time.”

According to Itron, the average meter reader can read about 300 meters a day when walking through a neighborhood and keying results into a handheld system. When municipalities switch to a mobile AMR system, the average meter reader can read up to 20,000 meters a day. “The efficiency factor of meter reading increases almost exponentially,” says Peter Sanburn, senior product marketing analyst with Itron. “You do not have to send a meter reader into the field every day of the month to collect those reads; you can get all of your reads over a few days. That is far more efficient.”

Jellison says that AMR systems give the water utility more credibility, which is important when customers have complaints about their water bill. “The more accurate information you have, the more credibility you have. When you have a customer call and ask about a bill–maybe that customer is concerned that the metering is too high–if you don’t have accurate information, it makes it difficult to argue the company’s point, or to argue it intelligently, at least. AMI systems give the customer service department accurate information. They help the district’s towns and its customers feel confident that everyone is paying accurately.”

Jellison is especially pleased that the AMR system will eliminate the headaches that came along with the many indoor meters located in the district’s boundaries. For example, in East Hartford, one of the municipalities served by the district, about 7,000 of the 13,000 customers had indoor meters. This resulted in thousands of estimated bills for customers who were not available to let Metropolitan District workers into their homes to read their meters. Thanks to the AMR system, the 7,000 customers will receive actual meter readings. “We want people to know that we are taking steps to improve the accuracy of our meter readings. We don’t want people to pay more than their fair share. We want to charge them as accurately as possible. Now, thanks to this system, we can.”   

As for the future of AMI, Ian MacLeod, marketing director at Master Meter Inc., believes that the key benefit for utilities incorporating this new technology is the ability to access “actionable intel created and made available for utility customers.” He says that access to “near-real-time consumption information helps create a partnership between utilities and their customers, so “˜conservation’ is no longer just a request, but a shared objective based on shared data that brings the two parties closer together. Imagine leak alerts sent to your cell phone. Many customers are willing to pay a nominal fee for this service and [this] creates a new value-added income stream for utilities. Many people are more than willing to pay a monthly fee for access to their consumption profile data in an effort to drive down their monthly usage and save money. This access is now possible via the Internet and modern AMI systems.”

And as communications technologies continue to improve, AMI’s potential will continue to expand. MacLeod highlights the advantages of incorporating a 3g network, explaining that “3G Cellular is a go-anywhere AMR solution providing two-way meter consumption data communication and specialized functionality, such as remote valve cutoff to distant areas and other logistically challenged situations. It works in tandem with other more traditional AMR/AMI configurations as part of a master hybrid solution.”

MacLeod has confidence that AMI is the right choice for utilities interested in providing real-time data for their customers, “Real data, shared in real time helps make real, informed decisions possible. AMI provides the foundation on which true customer-driven value added services are created and delivered for proactive leak mitigation, consumption awareness that, in turn, promotes conservation, and unparalleled improvements in operational efficiency.”