Automatic Water Meter Reading Technology
Automatic meter reading devices provide more accurate information on billing, water leaks, abnormal consumption, and previous consumption amounts.
Collecting data from metering devices automatically has taken off since the 1990s. Now information from electric, gas, and water meters can be gathered quickly, efficiently, and safely—no more stealth rottweilers, pit bulls, or dachshunds to contend with between the fence and the meter box.
As the technology spreads, the need for meter reading personnel will be eliminated and savings in that area will accumulate for utilities. Those technicians then can work on other, more valuable, and cost-effective projects for their employers.
The types of automatic meter reading (AMR) technologies generally available for water metering data now include handheld or touch technology, mobile and network technologies using telephony platforms (such as wired and wireless systems), radio frequency (RF), and power line transmission systems.
 |
Photo: Neptune Technology Group |
| The E-Coder digital encoder |
Mobile AMR Systems
The Neptune Technology Group—with base offices in Tallassee, AL; Mississauga, ON, Canada; and Mexico—supplies AMR systems to over 50 million North American customers. The group is involved with all the many different levels of various AMR technologies available, depending on the needs of the utilities involved.
“We offer the hybrid approach, in that we try not to force any one technology down the utility’s throat,” says Vincent McCaffrey, Neptune Technology Group territory manager for Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia. “Instead we ask, ‘What best serves the needs of this particular utility?’” That might range from a handheld device with selected radio transmitters to a mobile system with radio transmitters to a fixed-network setup.
“If the utility only wants to capture a monthly reading, sometimes simply a regular pro-read mechanical encoder is adequate; but again, a lot of utilities have come to us and asked us for more enhancements other than a reading, so we also have an upgraded digital encoder called the E-Coder,” says McCaffrey.
The E-Coder system provides higher resolutions to help offer leak detection, reverse flow indication, and tamper detection. This is more of a premium product, according to McCaffrey, with a premium register on the meter. But its higher resolution now allows Neptune to address customer service demands or inquiries better. “This has all been driven by the market and what they’re asking us for,” says McCaffrey.
With Neptune’s ARB Utility Management Systems, utilities can plan proactive meter maintenance, flag potential fraud scenarios, reduce water loss, proactively address high water bill complaints, and optimize revenue generation based on the information.
In October 2004 Elkins, WV, a city of just over 7,000, installed Neptune’s E-Coder system for its water meter reading. “All in all they’ve been working really well, after working out a few initial bugs in the system,” says Gary Tingler, assistant supervisor in the Elkins Water Department.
“The systems come with a 20-year solar battery. A few of the batteries initially went bad, but other than that first little glitch there were no other problems. Our meter pits tend to fill up easily with a lot of groundwater, especially in south Elkins. But even when they’ve been submerged in water or covered with snow during the winter, we’ve had no problems reading them with our AMR system,” says Tingler.
The E-Coder AMR system consists of a laptop computer and antennas mounted on the meter lids, which are down inside a meter pit. The laptop also has an antenna. A vehicle drives around the city and down streets. “In many cases we don’t even have to drive down the street. You will pick readings for up to five or six streets at once,” says Tingler. Before, one or two personnel read meters by visual check. They had three sections and read one section per month. In good weather it took from 10 to 12 days just to read about eight books, with the total system of 21 books.
“We now read 21 books in just two hours. The system contains approximately 4,500 meters. No one lost their job, but we did eliminate the meter-reading position. That person is now able to do other work.”
With more accountability in the system, Elkins is saving more water. The city’s meters will show if someone has had a leak in his or her home for a long period of time. “This technology has definitely made for more water efficiency all around for us,” says Tingler.
Beyond Consumption—Read-Only Systems
Itron’s Water Fixed Network AMR technology can do more than simply receive data messages from water meters, according to Jim Olkowski, product line manager with the Spokane-based company.
“Our two-way communications allow us to synchronize clocks in the endpoints,” says Olkowski. “With that we can communicate interval data in a true sense, meaning our 24-hour data message from the meter includes a meter reading for every hour on the hour.”
Time-synchronized endpoints make a huge difference for utilities who quickly realize they can compare metered consumption with the amount of water actually placed into the system. “If the system is fully metered and there is a difference with that time interval, water loss calculations may be done virtually on a daily basis,” says Olkowski. “This capability, when combined with our other technologies, enables utilities to localize, measure, pinpoint, and correct distribution system leaks more cost-effectively.”
These features are key differentiators and incredibly valuable to most water utilities. “It’s taken the market some time to understand how our technology is different and how to use it, but I’m pleased to say that many utilities have figured out how much money this can save them and are moving forward with ambitious plans,” says Olkowski. “Itron works with water utilities of all sizes and capacities. Even the smaller municipal water departments see the value of Water Fixed Network.”
As water becomes more precious, especially due to supply constraints, drought conditions, and system expansions, it becomes even more important to have a two-way metering ability and system management capability, says Olkowski. Historically, water utilities haven’t had this array of tools, which was recently supplemented with solutions from Flow Metrix, a company recently acquired by Itron.
“We are active not only from a business perspective but from a charitable one,” Olkowski says. “We know there are dire situations worldwide when it comes to clean water supply, and that is why we work with Water for People, an organization dedicated to helping third world countries with clean drinking water.”
Vicksburg Drive-by System AMR Up and Running
Sensus Metering Systems, a Uniontown, PA, AMR company with a variety of AMR solutions, introduced its first-generation RadioRead system at the 1993 American Water Works Association Conference in San Antonio, TX. Sensus’ AutoVu software features an actual interactive map of the community whose meters are being read.
“Vehicle RadioRead systems remain pretty popular,” says Kim Theiss, systems application engineer. “It largely depends on the size of the town or utility and what type of technology they’d like to go with.
“We do anything from handheld touch meter reading to handheld RadioRead, the next step up, to vehicle Meter Transceiver Units, and finally to fixed net and FlexNet systems implementing towers and endpoints transmitting at certain intervals. Towers in turn are collecting them and sending them back to a big server collecting the reads.”
What the vehicle system is doing with its desktop software is interfacing with billing. “Billing passes us a text file of the meters to be read, and then auto read is able to pull that in and translate it to a file for the laptop,” says Theiss. “Ours can go car to car; it’s portable and that’s something nice about it.”
After a wait of several years for the city to install a drive-by system, Vicksburg, MS, finally ended up using a private contractor to install its Sensus RadioRead AMR system. In 2005 Vicksburg’s system was completed and up for business after a year of working to bring various cycles and books involved with the city’s billings gradually online. Vicksburg’s is a combined water and natural gas radio reading system. Vicksburg has about 10,000 water meters within its city limits and 7,500 gas meters—close to 18,000 meters total.
Vicksburg’s AMR technology consists of a laptop with antenna and a GPS puck to show through a map on the laptop what street the driver is on. The meters are displayed on the screen and as the vehicle drives by the meters will disappear as they are read (the system can also be set so that the meters simply change color once they’re read).
“Vicksburg’s meters look exactly the same as they used to, but now there’s a register that fits on the dial with a wire exiting and connected to a MXU box,” says Tim Smith, project manager for this AMR installation with the City of Vicksburg. “The MXU is the mechanism sending the numbers to the laptop.
“Our drivers can monitor how well their readings are coming in. If he sees that the system isn’t working, he can pull his vehicle over and make sure everything is set up properly or wait until everything is operating. The system is a great tool in getting most all of our meters read. Before that we had manual meter readers.” Where it used to take the city’s walking meter readers three days to read a cycle, now it takes four or five hours.
“Our main reason for getting such a system, though, was for accuracy,” says Smith. “Over-reads have been cut down on due to human error with meter reading. We were getting more complaints, resulting in more credits for over-reads and more time involved in going back out to have someone read the meters again. The customer is now getting their actual usage and we’ve cut down on complaints. It’s been a good tool for us to switch to.”
As a public utility, it’s been important to keep the customers, citizens, and water users happy. Public officials were the ones sometimes complained to, according to Smith. “Now when we read a meter, trusting our RadioRead, if something is out of the norm for usage, it flags us to indicate that there might be a problem,” says Smith.
“We can call and tell them their bill is going to be high this month and ask if they’ve been using a lot of water. By letting them know, they can be on the lookout for a leak. The time rate of actually figuring out what is happening is much faster now.”
The city has an ordinance requiring that a credit of 50% be given on the water loss if a plumber goes to a home and fixes a leak that has occurred within the past two months.
In the course of the installation of this system, Vicksburg discovered a number of people who did not have accounts with the city, but had been using water and gas. “When we went through the whole system we were able to clean that up too,” says Smith.
“We discovered some 25 such situations; though it’s not a tremendous amount, every little bit helps when it comes to water efficiency and saving the city money over time. Now that we have every location using water with a meter on it, houses once thought to be vacant but actually using our services will be billed. Future cheating or stealing on usage can also be prevented.”
Fixed Network System
Hunt Technology in central Minnesota has partnered with Badger Meter, a Wisconsin-based AMR company, to come up with a product that enables AMR to take place using a fixed-network system, FNS. Hunt’s multiutility system is two years old, but the company has been selling systems since 1994.
The system has a transmitter on the water meter for the power line carrier system using a power line network to transmit back to the substation where the data collector or substation processing unit is located. The module is equipped with an antenna and the capability to read the water and or gas and electric transmitter, built by Badger Meter.
“This system is unique because it is a power line–based system,” says Dan Jacobson, marketing communications specialist at Hunt Technologies.
“It takes our advanced metering endpoint for reading electric meters and uses that same endpoint for reading the water meter at the same location as well,” says Jacobson. “This is done with Badger Meter’s Orion transmitter on the water meter side. We have an RF capability within our electric meter to read the electric, gas, or water back to a module, which then sends that data or information over the power line to the utility.
“This system is basically a radio transmitter between the electric meter and the water meter. If you are doing the AMR system for electric meters, with this setup you’re essentially getting two systems in one, or three in one with the gas meter. Multiple technologies don’t have to be managed; it’s the same software platform on the back end. You can cover a whole house with one system if the utility has all of that or contracts to do those readings.”
Another advantage to such a system is the fact that data are being received on a daily basis. “This is a plus over mobile drive-by or walk-by systems, which are the ones primarily used today for water metering as well as electric metering,” says Jacobson. “We also have a leak detection function to monitor use each day, as opposed to receiving a usage read once a month.
“The term ‘advanced metering infrastructure’ arose to define a two-way communication system where not only do you get a meter reading but you can also send commands back to the meter.”
The data collector or substation processing unit is located in the electric substation. From there, data return to a central server, either at the utility or at Hunt’s hosting company. The Web browser–based software platform command center operates any of its power line carrier systems. This is where access is achieved for commanding and controlling data for both electric and water services. The multiutility system is a two-way system to the electric meter but a one-way system to the water meter.
“Dealing with only one technology, one software platform, and one data warehouse certainly is a more efficient way to accomplish the task from a management standpoint,” says Jacobson.
Fixed network systems are clearly more expensive than mobile systems, but Jacobson says the FNS has advantages over a radio system from an infrastructure standpoint because towers don’t have to be installed, there are no licensing issues, and they tend to be more reliable. Power lines are all out there already. The infrastructure is basically only the communications equipment that must be installed in the substations.
“Radio systems can work fine in some areas, but in a hilly terrain or places with tall buildings they may prove challenging,” says Jacobson, “whereas if power lines are used, they’re already there and there are no issues with geography.
“We have plans to offer mesh capabilities—mesh being a radio frequency network using meters to communicate back and forth—for water as well,” says Jacobson.
Beta Testing Proves a Benefit
Brainerd, a central Minnesota city with a population of around 13,000, has some 8,000 utility meters combining electric, water, and wastewater for its customers. Brainerd was a beta test site for the Hunt Technology system, according to Scott Sjolund, technology supervisor with the Brainerd Public Utility. The utility is using Hunt’s AMR multiutility product, which sits inside of the electric meter and transmits the readings back to the office through the power line.
“Hunt collects the water reading via a short range radio, back to the electric meter, and the electric meter sends both the electric and water readings back to the office,” says Sjolund. “In the past there had been a lot of different products that did one or the other but nothing that really did both.”
 |
Photo: Colorado Springs Utilities |
| Electric meter exchange |
Because Brainerd is an older community, many of the meters are located inside the homes. “People aren’t so happy to see people walk inside their house to have the meter read,” says Sjolund. “Since we have a substantial 40% rental turnover rate in housing, this means an even higher frequency of ‘surprise’ visits for residents. Besides accuracy and water efficiency, obtaining more data was a big benefit, as well as getting our employees out of harm’s way.”
Brainerd first got into the Hunt system in early 2004. The substation equipment was installed and the beta testing was completed over the next six to eight months. When that worked well enough, it grew to 1,000 meters. The city expects to have the system completely installed by the end of 2009.
“Things are working rather well,” says Sjolund. “We are reading our water meters to within 1 gallon rather than 1,000 gallons, as in the past.”
One of the benefits is that the device Brainerd’s monitoring the meter with can actually detect leaks and give the city a heads-up the next day that a particular customer has a potential leak because his or her meter kept turning all night long. The customer can then call and have his or her toilets checked, which may be running unnecessarily. “Many times it ends up being something simple, but it can end up costing a lot of money if you don’t see [what the problem is] for a couple of weeks,” says Sjolund.
Being a beta test site meant putting up with a few of the early glitches, but the upside is they received direct input on how the end product would be. “We had more of a direct line to the manufacturer in suggesting how things can be improved for our needs with the product,” says Sjolund. “For us, a smaller company, to be more in the loop was a definite plus; it’s great to be listened to. All in all the beta test glitches were pretty minor.”
Unlike many companies, Brainerd is doing the actual installation work itself. “To be able to afford AMR we’ve done a lot of the work in-house,” says Sjolund. “We’re trying to use the same people who are doing the meter reading now for this deployment. In municipalities it’s typically harder to convince a board that you need extra people rather than reassign people to different tasks, as there are always an abundance of tasks to complete.”
Colorado Springs Deploys Fixed Network AMR System
Colorado Springs Utilities is in the process of deploying a wireless fixed network AMR system to handle all of their utility metering, electric, water, and gas. This deployment started at the end of 2005. The system contains over 500,000 meters—130,000 of which will be water meters—and to date 35,000 meters have been deployed. The plan is to bring online 120,000 meters per year until they are entirely up and running in four to four-and-a-half years.
Cellnet Technologies of Alpharetta, GA, is supplying the units, which operate in the unlicensed radio band. Each meter talks directly to a concentrator, and then those collect all the various meter readings and propagate them through a network to reach a data collection system.
Colorado Springs Utilities has deployed close to 5,000 AMR water meters to date. Nearly all of the city’s water meters are located indoors, near the hot water heater, so each home must be accessed individually for installation. A radio module will now replace the outdoor touch-pads.
“Currently we are using the system for the cost benefit from meter readings, since we do handle the meter reads for all three utilities,” says John Smith, AMR principal engineer on this project. “The expense of reading meters, turn-on and -offs, off-cycle reads, and estimated reads will drop and that is how we justified the cost of this system; but those are the hard costs. The soft costs that we’ll also benefit from are the potential for leak detection as well as policing our water restriction policies, as we are in a dry environment out here. In 2004, we did charge people who were not following our drought restrictions.”
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AMR will eliminate the need for the meter reader to enter the property or home, or to locate and open an underground meter pit. The utilities save money through increased speed of reading, lower risk from regularly entering private property, and having less chance of missing reads due to meter access issues.
And … Rover can keep on snoozing.
January-February 2007
Automatic Water Meter Reading Technology
Automatic meter reading devices provide more accurate information on billing, water leaks, abnormal consumption, and previous consumption amounts.
Collecting data from metering devices automatically has taken off since the 1990s. Now information from electric, gas, and water meters can be gathered quickly, efficiently, and safely—no more stealth rottweilers, pit bulls, or dachshunds to contend with between the fence and the meter box.
As the technology spreads, the need for meter reading personnel will be eliminated and savings in that area will accumulate for utilities. Those technicians then can work on other, more valuable, and cost-effective projects for their employers.
The types of automatic meter reading (AMR) technologies generally available for water metering data now include handheld or touch technology, mobile and network technologies using telephony platforms (such as wired and wireless systems), radio frequency (RF), and power line transmission systems.
|
Photo: Neptune Technology Group |
| The E-Coder digital encoder |
Mobile AMR Systems
The Neptune Technology Group—with base offices in Tallassee, AL; Mississauga, ON, Canada; and Mexico—supplies AMR systems to over 50 million North American customers. The group is involved with all the many different levels of various AMR technologies available, depending on the needs of the utilities involved.
“We offer the hybrid approach, in that we try not to force any one technology down the utility’s throat,” says Vincent McCaffrey, Neptune Technology Group territory manager for Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia. “Instead we ask, ‘What best serves the needs of this particular utility?’” That might range from a handheld device with selected radio transmitters to a mobile system with radio transmitters to a fixed-network setup.
“If the utility only wants to capture a monthly reading, sometimes simply a regular pro-read mechanical encoder is adequate; but again, a lot of utilities have come to us and asked us for more enhancements other than a reading, so we also have an upgraded digital encoder called the E-Coder,” says McCaffrey.
The E-Coder system provides higher resolutions to help offer leak detection, reverse flow indication, and tamper detection. This is more of a premium product, according to McCaffrey, with a premium register on the meter. But its higher resolution now allows Neptune to address customer service demands or inquiries better. “This has all been driven by the market and what they’re asking us for,” says McCaffrey.
With Neptune’s ARB Utility Management Systems, utilities can plan proactive meter maintenance, flag potential fraud scenarios, reduce water loss, proactively address high water bill complaints, and optimize revenue generation based on the information.
In October 2004 Elkins, WV, a city of just over 7,000, installed Neptune’s E-Coder system for its water meter reading. “All in all they’ve been working really well, after working out a few initial bugs in the system,” says Gary Tingler, assistant supervisor in the Elkins Water Department.
“The systems come with a 20-year solar battery. A few of the batteries initially went bad, but other than that first little glitch there were no other problems. Our meter pits tend to fill up easily with a lot of groundwater, especially in south Elkins. But even when they’ve been submerged in water or covered with snow during the winter, we’ve had no problems reading them with our AMR system,” says Tingler.
The E-Coder AMR system consists of a laptop computer and antennas mounted on the meter lids, which are down inside a meter pit. The laptop also has an antenna. A vehicle drives around the city and down streets. “In many cases we don’t even have to drive down the street. You will pick readings for up to five or six streets at once,” says Tingler. Before, one or two personnel read meters by visual check. They had three sections and read one section per month. In good weather it took from 10 to 12 days just to read about eight books, with the total system of 21 books.
“We now read 21 books in just two hours. The system contains approximately 4,500 meters. No one lost their job, but we did eliminate the meter-reading position. That person is now able to do other work.”
With more accountability in the system, Elkins is saving more water. The city’s meters will show if someone has had a leak in his or her home for a long period of time. “This technology has definitely made for more water efficiency all around for us,” says Tingler.
Beyond Consumption—Read-Only Systems
Itron’s Water Fixed Network AMR technology can do more than simply receive data messages from water meters, according to Jim Olkowski, product line manager with the Spokane-based company.
“Our two-way communications allow us to synchronize clocks in the endpoints,” says Olkowski. “With that we can communicate interval data in a true sense, meaning our 24-hour data message from the meter includes a meter reading for every hour on the hour.”
Time-synchronized endpoints make a huge difference for utilities who quickly realize they can compare metered consumption with the amount of water actually placed into the system. “If the system is fully metered and there is a difference with that time interval, water loss calculations may be done virtually on a daily basis,” says Olkowski. “This capability, when combined with our other technologies, enables utilities to localize, measure, pinpoint, and correct distribution system leaks more cost-effectively.”
These features are key differentiators and incredibly valuable to most water utilities. “It’s taken the market some time to understand how our technology is different and how to use it, but I’m pleased to say that many utilities have figured out how much money this can save them and are moving forward with ambitious plans,” says Olkowski. “Itron works with water utilities of all sizes and capacities. Even the smaller municipal water departments see the value of Water Fixed Network.”
As water becomes more precious, especially due to supply constraints, drought conditions, and system expansions, it becomes even more important to have a two-way metering ability and system management capability, says Olkowski. Historically, water utilities haven’t had this array of tools, which was recently supplemented with solutions from Flow Metrix, a company recently acquired by Itron.
“We are active not only from a business perspective but from a charitable one,” Olkowski says. “We know there are dire situations worldwide when it comes to clean water supply, and that is why we work with Water for People, an organization dedicated to helping third world countries with clean drinking water.”
Vicksburg Drive-by System AMR Up and Running
Sensus Metering Systems, a Uniontown, PA, AMR company with a variety of AMR solutions, introduced its first-generation RadioRead system at the 1993 American Water Works Association Conference in San Antonio, TX. Sensus’ AutoVu software features an actual interactive map of the community whose meters are being read.
“Vehicle RadioRead systems remain pretty popular,” says Kim Theiss, systems application engineer. “It largely depends on the size of the town or utility and what type of technology they’d like to go with.
“We do anything from handheld touch meter reading to handheld RadioRead, the next step up, to vehicle Meter Transceiver Units, and finally to fixed net and FlexNet systems implementing towers and endpoints transmitting at certain intervals. Towers in turn are collecting them and sending them back to a big server collecting the reads.”
What the vehicle system is doing with its desktop software is interfacing with billing. “Billing passes us a text file of the meters to be read, and then auto read is able to pull that in and translate it to a file for the laptop,” says Theiss. “Ours can go car to car; it’s portable and that’s something nice about it.”
After a wait of several years for the city to install a drive-by system, Vicksburg, MS, finally ended up using a private contractor to install its Sensus RadioRead AMR system. In 2005 Vicksburg’s system was completed and up for business after a year of working to bring various cycles and books involved with the city’s billings gradually online. Vicksburg’s is a combined water and natural gas radio reading system. Vicksburg has about 10,000 water meters within its city limits and 7,500 gas meters—close to 18,000 meters total.
Vicksburg’s AMR technology consists of a laptop with antenna and a GPS puck to show through a map on the laptop what street the driver is on. The meters are displayed on the screen and as the vehicle drives by the meters will disappear as they are read (the system can also be set so that the meters simply change color once they’re read).
“Vicksburg’s meters look exactly the same as they used to, but now there’s a register that fits on the dial with a wire exiting and connected to a MXU box,” says Tim Smith, project manager for this AMR installation with the City of Vicksburg. “The MXU is the mechanism sending the numbers to the laptop.
“Our drivers can monitor how well their readings are coming in. If he sees that the system isn’t working, he can pull his vehicle over and make sure everything is set up properly or wait until everything is operating. The system is a great tool in getting most all of our meters read. Before that we had manual meter readers.” Where it used to take the city’s walking meter readers three days to read a cycle, now it takes four or five hours.
“Our main reason for getting such a system, though, was for accuracy,” says Smith. “Over-reads have been cut down on due to human error with meter reading. We were getting more complaints, resulting in more credits for over-reads and more time involved in going back out to have someone read the meters again. The customer is now getting their actual usage and we’ve cut down on complaints. It’s been a good tool for us to switch to.”
As a public utility, it’s been important to keep the customers, citizens, and water users happy. Public officials were the ones sometimes complained to, according to Smith. “Now when we read a meter, trusting our RadioRead, if something is out of the norm for usage, it flags us to indicate that there might be a problem,” says Smith.
“We can call and tell them their bill is going to be high this month and ask if they’ve been using a lot of water. By letting them know, they can be on the lookout for a leak. The time rate of actually figuring out what is happening is much faster now.”
The city has an ordinance requiring that a credit of 50% be given on the water loss if a plumber goes to a home and fixes a leak that has occurred within the past two months.
In the course of the installation of this system, Vicksburg discovered a number of people who did not have accounts with the city, but had been using water and gas. “When we went through the whole system we were able to clean that up too,” says Smith.
“We discovered some 25 such situations; though it’s not a tremendous amount, every little bit helps when it comes to water efficiency and saving the city money over time. Now that we have every location using water with a meter on it, houses once thought to be vacant but actually using our services will be billed. Future cheating or stealing on usage can also be prevented.”
Fixed Network System
Hunt Technology in central Minnesota has partnered with Badger Meter, a Wisconsin-based AMR company, to come up with a product that enables AMR to take place using a fixed-network system, FNS. Hunt’s multiutility system is two years old, but the company has been selling systems since 1994.
The system has a transmitter on the water meter for the power line carrier system using a power line network to transmit back to the substation where the data collector or substation processing unit is located. The module is equipped with an antenna and the capability to read the water and or gas and electric transmitter, built by Badger Meter.
“This system is unique because it is a power line–based system,” says Dan Jacobson, marketing communications specialist at Hunt Technologies.
“It takes our advanced metering endpoint for reading electric meters and uses that same endpoint for reading the water meter at the same location as well,” says Jacobson. “This is done with Badger Meter’s Orion transmitter on the water meter side. We have an RF capability within our electric meter to read the electric, gas, or water back to a module, which then sends that data or information over the power line to the utility.
“This system is basically a radio transmitter between the electric meter and the water meter. If you are doing the AMR system for electric meters, with this setup you’re essentially getting two systems in one, or three in one with the gas meter. Multiple technologies don’t have to be managed; it’s the same software platform on the back end. You can cover a whole house with one system if the utility has all of that or contracts to do those readings.”
Another advantage to such a system is the fact that data are being received on a daily basis. “This is a plus over mobile drive-by or walk-by systems, which are the ones primarily used today for water metering as well as electric metering,” says Jacobson. “We also have a leak detection function to monitor use each day, as opposed to receiving a usage read once a month.
“The term ‘advanced metering infrastructure’ arose to define a two-way communication system where not only do you get a meter reading but you can also send commands back to the meter.”
The data collector or substation processing unit is located in the electric substation. From there, data return to a central server, either at the utility or at Hunt’s hosting company. The Web browser–based software platform command center operates any of its power line carrier systems. This is where access is achieved for commanding and controlling data for both electric and water services. The multiutility system is a two-way system to the electric meter but a one-way system to the water meter.
“Dealing with only one technology, one software platform, and one data warehouse certainly is a more efficient way to accomplish the task from a management standpoint,” says Jacobson.
Fixed network systems are clearly more expensive than mobile systems, but Jacobson says the FNS has advantages over a radio system from an infrastructure standpoint because towers don’t have to be installed, there are no licensing issues, and they tend to be more reliable. Power lines are all out there already. The infrastructure is basically only the communications equipment that must be installed in the substations.
“Radio systems can work fine in some areas, but in a hilly terrain or places with tall buildings they may prove challenging,” says Jacobson, “whereas if power lines are used, they’re already there and there are no issues with geography.
“We have plans to offer mesh capabilities—mesh being a radio frequency network using meters to communicate back and forth—for water as well,” says Jacobson.
Beta Testing Proves a Benefit
Brainerd, a central Minnesota city with a population of around 13,000, has some 8,000 utility meters combining electric, water, and wastewater for its customers. Brainerd was a beta test site for the Hunt Technology system, according to Scott Sjolund, technology supervisor with the Brainerd Public Utility. The utility is using Hunt’s AMR multiutility product, which sits inside of the electric meter and transmits the readings back to the office through the power line.
“Hunt collects the water reading via a short range radio, back to the electric meter, and the electric meter sends both the electric and water readings back to the office,” says Sjolund. “In the past there had been a lot of different products that did one or the other but nothing that really did both.”
|
Photo: Colorado Springs Utilities |
| Electric meter exchange |
Because Brainerd is an older community, many of the meters are located inside the homes. “People aren’t so happy to see people walk inside their house to have the meter read,” says Sjolund. “Since we have a substantial 40% rental turnover rate in housing, this means an even higher frequency of ‘surprise’ visits for residents. Besides accuracy and water efficiency, obtaining more data was a big benefit, as well as getting our employees out of harm’s way.”
Brainerd first got into the Hunt system in early 2004. The substation equipment was installed and the beta testing was completed over the next six to eight months. When that worked well enough, it grew to 1,000 meters. The city expects to have the system completely installed by the end of 2009.
“Things are working rather well,” says Sjolund. “We are reading our water meters to within 1 gallon rather than 1,000 gallons, as in the past.”
One of the benefits is that the device Brainerd’s monitoring the meter with can actually detect leaks and give the city a heads-up the next day that a particular customer has a potential leak because his or her meter kept turning all night long. The customer can then call and have his or her toilets checked, which may be running unnecessarily. “Many times it ends up being something simple, but it can end up costing a lot of money if you don’t see [what the problem is] for a couple of weeks,” says Sjolund.
Being a beta test site meant putting up with a few of the early glitches, but the upside is they received direct input on how the end product would be. “We had more of a direct line to the manufacturer in suggesting how things can be improved for our needs with the product,” says Sjolund. “For us, a smaller company, to be more in the loop was a definite plus; it’s great to be listened to. All in all the beta test glitches were pretty minor.”
Unlike many companies, Brainerd is doing the actual installation work itself. “To be able to afford AMR we’ve done a lot of the work in-house,” says Sjolund. “We’re trying to use the same people who are doing the meter reading now for this deployment. In municipalities it’s typically harder to convince a board that you need extra people rather than reassign people to different tasks, as there are always an abundance of tasks to complete.”
Colorado Springs Deploys Fixed Network AMR System
Colorado Springs Utilities is in the process of deploying a wireless fixed network AMR system to handle all of their utility metering, electric, water, and gas. This deployment started at the end of 2005. The system contains over 500,000 meters—130,000 of which will be water meters—and to date 35,000 meters have been deployed. The plan is to bring online 120,000 meters per year until they are entirely up and running in four to four-and-a-half years.
Cellnet Technologies of Alpharetta, GA, is supplying the units, which operate in the unlicensed radio band. Each meter talks directly to a concentrator, and then those collect all the various meter readings and propagate them through a network to reach a data collection system.
Colorado Springs Utilities has deployed close to 5,000 AMR water meters to date. Nearly all of the city’s water meters are located indoors, near the hot water heater, so each home must be accessed individually for installation. A radio module will now replace the outdoor touch-pads.
“Currently we are using the system for the cost benefit from meter readings, since we do handle the meter reads for all three utilities,” says John Smith, AMR principal engineer on this project. “The expense of reading meters, turn-on and -offs, off-cycle reads, and estimated reads will drop and that is how we justified the cost of this system; but those are the hard costs. The soft costs that we’ll also benefit from are the potential for leak detection as well as policing our water restriction policies, as we are in a dry environment out here. In 2004, we did charge people who were not following our drought restrictions.”
AMR will eliminate the need for the meter reader to enter the property or home, or to locate and open an underground meter pit. The utilities save money through increased speed of reading, lower risk from regularly entering private property, and having less chance of missing reads due to meter access issues.
And … Rover can keep on snoozing.