As water conservation becomes an increasingly important concern, many districts are turning to AMR and data capturing technology to help ensure accurate meter reading.
Water utilities departments throughout the United States face a host of issues these days as water conservation becomes an increasingly important concern in municipal water management. To that end, many are turning to newer technologies, such as automatic meter reading and long-term data capturing, to help ensure accuracy in meter reading.
One such system making its mark is the Datamatic FIREFLY Meter Interface Unit (MIU), which is being used for more accurate readings of water, electric, and gas meters. The system is being deployed to address a number of concerns: settling customer usage disputes; detection of water waste, leaks, and loss; and monitoring and enforcing water conservation measures, long-term master planning, and even meter-reader safety.
The system works as such: The FIREFLY MIU is an integrated automatic meter reader (AMR) that uses radio frequency to transmit current water usage and alert data from the FIREFLY-equipped meter to a Roadrunner handheld unit, a mobile automatic meter reading receiver, or a fixed network. The RouteSTAR meter reading application receives the uploaded data from the Roadrunner receivers, enabling utility departments to manage the data for billing through ProfilePLUS.
The units can be set up to archive usage data at intervals defined by the user. A meter can be set to record at 60-minute intervals for more than 74 days, for example. The AMR units are universally compatible for installation on any type of existing meter.
High-Desert AMR
It had become apparent in Hesperia, CA—a city located in a high-desert area 75 miles northeast of Los Angeles—that the population of 80,000 residents was rapidly increasing, and among the many issues that needed to be addressed to accommodate the growth was streamlining water meter reading. Additionally, Hesperia had been receiving up to 30 complaints per month from water utility customers surprised by their bills.
“We start receiving complaints about high water bills at the onset of winter, after they have had a hot summer and they’ve watered everything they could water,” says Danny Knight, a supervisor for Hesperia.
In addition, as construction ramps up in the city, contractors are building tract homes with lawns that require watering maintenance.
“This is a desert,” Knight points out. “People moving here come from areas where nice, green, lush lawns exist. They don’t exist very well here without a lot of water. Along with leaks, we’re finding the watering times are excessive. Water is expensive here—it’s our cheapest utility, but it is still real expensive.”
In an effort to address the challenges, city officials reviewed products from five manufacturers before choosing Datamatic. Hesperia deployed a FIREFLY system in 2000 to help monitor its 28,000 meters. With the company’s technology providing profiling, it enabled the city to track water consumption and check for leaks in the previous 74 days to the reading date, thus aiding the city’s utility department to resolve issues customers had with water bills.
With the FIREFLY system, Hesperia has been able to pinpoint areas where customers are experiencing water leaks and thus is able to resolve billing issues.
“In the past, we sent someone out to check the meter, and if we couldn’t find a leak, we had to rely on the customer’s honesty, and at that point in time, we would generally make an adjustment in the customer’s favor,” Knight says. “Since we started using this system, if the customer’s meter has a FIREFLY installed, I can pinpoint the day they fixed the leak. It’s worked out well.”
If the city identifies a leak in a customer’s system, the customer is notified about it so it can be fixed. “If we have a FIREFLY attached to the meter, we pull a profile and can show the customer where the problem may be,” says Knight. “It could be the sprinklers are on too long or that they in fact have a leak somewhere. It’s a detailed system.”
Hesperia has cut about $1,500 in processing and researching costs as a result of installing the FIREFLY system. The city also offers a value-added service to its large users by sending them hour-by-hour data on their water usage.
“We have a few users who require information and pay a fee for it,” Knight says. “We pull a profile for them each month and send it to them, and then they utilize the information for their business.”
For residential users, Hesperia will pull one profile at no charge.
“Then, depending on the problem, we may pull an additional one to verify the situation has been corrected,” explains Knight.
Hesperia’s engineers are using the FIREFLY data for the city’s master water plan. The city tracked 100 profiles in four points throughout the city for a year to use the information in profiling the city’s master plan for water usage.
“We attached it to lot size and also whether it was commercial, industrial, or residential,” Knight says.
The system provides all of the information Hesperia’s water utility department needs, Knight says. "It clearly is a good product,” he says of FIREFLY. “Their customer service is the very best.”
Hesperia is deploying the FIREFLY system through an ongoing meter rotation program.
“We have a lot of old meters that are in excess of 15 years old throughout our system,” Knight says, adding the city is rotating its older water meters with new ones.
Knight says there’s a very small learning curve involved in using the FIREFLY systems, crediting Datamatic with “excellent” training seminars, a viewpoint shared by other municipal officials.
AMR in Suburban Michigan
Auburn Hills, MI, 30 miles north of Detroit, has more than 20,000 residents and the number nearly doubles during the workday with the city’s companies supporting area automotive production, “so you have a lot of people coming in and using more water,” notes Ron Melchert, director of public services for Auburn Hills.
With a projected increase in development, Auburn Hills is poised to become one of the largest suburban cities in southeastern Michigan, making water monitoring a vital issue.
In the past, it used to take three employees 360 days a year to read the water monitors at a cost of about $108,000, making meter reading expensive and time-consuming.
It also was dangerous.
Many meters are located in the middle of warehouses and manufacturing facilities, meaning the city risked thousands of dollars in workers’ compensation payments for injuries that occurred while collecting water consumption data.
Additionally, there were hundreds of meters that were not read for a year because there were not enough workers to check each one to ensure it was properly functioning. That meant those whose water consumption was regularly recorded were subsidizing the users connected to the unread meters; additionally the city was not acquiring accurate revenues.
To address those challenges, Auburn Hills installed the FIREFLY AMR system throughout 2001. Using the FIREFLY AMR is expected to save the city a considerable sum of money over a 10-year period based on a 10-day meter-reading cycle each month.
Under the previous touch-pad system the city used, when three meter readers were needed to finish the job; the FIREFLY system only requires one meter reader. That one employee can complete the entire system in 18 days, gathering the data via radio frequency at a cost of $5,040 annually. The city’s savings in meter-reading costs have averaged more than $95,000 a year.
There hadn’t been much of a learning curve in using FIREFLY, says Melchert.
“We were already used to another touch pad meter-reading system, so we were going through the process of exporting a read file from our utility billing program to the reading software, then gathering the reads and importing that file back into the utility billing system,” he says.
The biggest change was using radio-frequency equipment and programming the meter interface units, though that operation was straightforward, he notes. In addition, Melchert points to Auburn Heights’ ability to send out accurate water bills each month as one of the city’s biggest gains in terms of water efficiency.
“The last time I measured it, about 99.5% of the reads were accurate, so we were able to clean up our non-read lists and replace hundreds of old meters that may have been reading slow,” he says. “We’ve been able to capture more revenue by getting a more accurate read in terms of consumption.”
Auburn Hills also uses the FIREFLY AMR data to assist customers in pinpointing leaks in their water systems.
“As the FIREFLY stores about 74 days of information, if we get a high bill complaint, we immediately do a profile,” Melchert says. “We are able to show them where water is actually going through the meter, what time of day, and we are able to help them have confidence that the meter is functioning properly and there really is a leak somewhere in their system.”
The city’s utility department will assist the customer in locating the leak, which could be within a toilet, a humidifier, or an ice machine, for example. Once the leak is located, it’s up to the customer to fix it.
While Auburn Hills officials considered many systems, Melchert says the FIREFLY AMR was chosen because of the profiling information that can be obtained over a period of more than two months. Additionally, other systems required more complex wiring setups.
“We removed the touch pad, placed the interface unit on, programmed it and we were off and running,” says Melchert. “That saved us about $60,000 in installation costs and labor.”
Island AMR
Leak detection was also a major benefit of the FIREFLY system in Sanibel Island, FL. The system was deployed more than a year ago as part of a pilot project. Sanibel Island has used Datamatic handheld meter-reading units for many years and is now testing AMR.
One of the first meters installed as part of the pilot project was at a large resort. Until then, a large water leak went undetected for a year. The FIRELY data showed a flat line of large amounts of water usage throughout the early morning hours. That information red-flagged a large and steady leak in the system.
The resort hired a leak detection company to pinpoint the problem by injecting gas into the internal water pipes, which indicated the leaking water had been flowing into a storm drain. After the problem got fixed, the resort’s measured water usage dropped dramatically, resulting in considerable water savings, says Rusty Isler, assistant general manger for the Island Water Association.
The FIREFLY unit at that resort is one of about 100 that have been installed throughout Sanibel Island, with 50 additional units planned for more installation points. High-water-usage customers have been the targeted recipients of the systems, Isler says.
“High-water users will many times want us to analyze their irrigation system, so we’ll use the FIREFLY as a tool for that,” says Isler.
As Sanibel Island officials test the system, they are taking a special interest in its data logging capabilities, he says. “We’re in a wet environment here, so we’re cautious about making sure we have some long-term stability. A lot of our meter pits get under water at different times of the year in the rainy season, so we’re trying to make sure the equipment’s going to hold up over the long term.”
Because this Florida community is interested in water conservation, Isler sees the FIREFLY units as being a useful tool in master planning for upcoming years.
In the Heartland
In Trenton, OH, Datamatic’s FIREFLY system was deployed in 2004 to settle consumption disputes, identify water waste, and increase efficiency reading the city’s 4,000 meters.
“Our meter reader would walk the whole city, and it took quite a long time to do that,” notes Pam Mrusek, utilities billing administrator for Trenton. “FIREFLY was an easier, quicker way to get our meters read.”
Time investment was the major reason Trenton got the system, she notes.
“Meter reading went from a week and a half to two days, so that’s a major improvement. It freed our meter reader up to do other things,” she says.
Additionally, the accurate data supplied by the FIREFLY AMR system has been effective in settling consumption disputes. Mrusek says when customers call the city about bills believed to be too high, her department can pull the ProfilePLUS data to show them their daily usage.
Typically, there is a leak in the system—ordinarily found in the toilet plumbing—but often customers don’t believe it until they see it in print. It’s common for the department to receive and settle about eight complaints per month. “We rarely have had to go back to the same house,” says Mrusek of complaint investigations.
Another factor contributing to complaints comes from customers who use water softeners. “Sometimes, a water softener will run more or recycle more often than it’s supposed to, and if they don’t catch it, they don’t know,” says Mrusek. “But then when we look at the profile, we can show them where it was in the middle of the night and it was running more often than what they had thought. Sometimes it would just continue to run if they didn’t have it set up correctly.”
As such, the water softeners use 40 to 50 gallons for each cycle, and if it runs continually, it can waste about 200 gallons per hour. The current rate for water is $6.99 per thousand gallons. Customers save money due in part to the ability of the FIREFLY system to red-flag these problems.
“It makes a major difference in their water bill,” notes Mrusek. “I love the profile. It shows usage, whether there’s no usage at all or continual usage. It does it daily and then breaks it down into an hourly rate, which is great. We can tell exactly when they’ve been home or if they’ve been watering outside. That helps in the summer months.”
West Coast Success
Most municipalities that need to make the most of the limited tax dollars from which they operate gravitate toward tools that help them achieve several goals at once.
This is the benefit of the FIREFLY system for Ventura, CA.
A few years ago, the city—which has about 30,000 water accounts—sought an AMR provider and considered several options before choosing Datamatic’s FIREFLY units. Ventura had conducted a pilot study for a year and a half with the units.
“We came to the conclusion that Datamatic had what we were looking for with the data profiling,” notes Utilities Service Lead Will Santoyo. “We thought it would be beneficial to our customers to be able to tell them about their water usage for 60 days, because the FIREFLY records the data for 74 days.”
Santoyo jokes that he wouldn’t be able to help customers settle their water usage disputes unless he moved in with them to see how they were using water.
Levity aside, Ventura is able to precisely pinpoint those data.
“Now we can put a FIREFLY unit on their meter,” he says. “We used to pull them off after a week or two, but now we’re just leaving them on the account because we know they are going to come back later on.
“With the information from the FIREFLY, we can tell them what time they irrigate, what time they take showers, what time they do dishes, or if there is a leak somewhere because that shows up as continuous movement.”
Using handheld units, utility workers can immediately pick up a problem. "It tells us if it’s a leak or a continuous leakage. I may take the profile right there and bring it back in with the reading, and then I look at it and go tell the customer,” says Santoyo.
Usually a toilet is the source of a leak because it’s continuous, he notes. "When it is an irrigation leak or people have high usage, it kicks out a code. When people get a high bill, we’re able to look at their historical data to tell them their irrigation system is causing them 300 cubic feet a day. You have the ability to go back 74 days. Or we’re able to tell them when the leak started. Because it was pretty even in the last month and then during the next month there’s a little increase, you’re able to say that is when the leak started. That’s pretty impressive.”
Identifying such leaks saves money for the customer and water for the city. While a typical bill may be $130 a month, a leak can cause that amount to triple.
Santoyo offers an example: “I was recently at a commercial place that did oil changing and their reading was 2,004, and when I went yesterday it was 2,008, so from Monday until yesterday they used 4,000 gallons on a toilet leak.”
Although only 70 of the city’s 30,000 accounts are on FIREFLY units, each one has yielded success, Santoyo notes. Ventura has divided its 30,000 accounts into eight series and will use the FIREFLY units on one series at a time.
The FIREFLY has been especially beneficial in Ventura’s water efficiency goals. The city has been working on a master water plan and needed data about the top 10 water users; the needed information was supplied by FIREFLY and passed on to city engineers.
Ventura also has installed FIREFLY units on 260 city parks meters in order to ascertain how much water the parks system uses as Ventura embarks on an assertive water conservation program.
Trying to get its citizens to buy in to the idea of water conservation can be challenging at times, Santoyo notes. One captive audience has been the city’s future residents: its children. The city has spearheaded a calendar contest for the past eight years called “Conserve Our Water,” inviting students to interpret with art ways in which water can be used more efficiently.
“We hope that by the more buzz we put out there, people are going to say they want one of [the FIREFLY units] at their house,” Santoyo says. “It does good work. It gives us what we want: the information on the profile, whether it’s residential or commercial usage.”
Ventura also plans to utilize Mosaic, Datamatic’s newest product release.
Company spokesman Todd Onsa describes Mosaic as a “mesh” network.
“Within Mosaic, each FIREFLY Meter Interface Unit also acts as a repeater. Data is ‘hopped’ between units as they create multiple, redundant pathways to the gateway. The system automatically circumvents issues and obstacles without human intervention to ensure the data arrives,” he says.
The Mosaic-class FIREFLYs will support complex monitoring functions.
“Users can define conditions that trigger the unit to transmit a packet of detailed usage data over the network for further analysis,” Onsa says.
The technology is especially useful during the implementation of water conservation measures.
“New watering schedules can be ‘pushed’ to each FIREFLY through the mesh,” says Onsa. “If a customer should exceed these new thresholds, the FIREFLY can be set to automatically transmit hour-by-hour usage for the two days preceding and following the event. This functionality eliminates the need to endlessly patrol streets searching for conservation violators and provides the concrete evidence necessary for effective enforcement.”
Other applications include detailed load studies based on geographic or demographic criteria, near real-time leak detection, and flagging usage on inactive accounts, says Onsa.
“This approach allows the utility to focus on specific issues and not on storing ever-growing volumes of data from normally functioning meters—although Mosaic can be configured to do this as well,” he adds.
Mosaic also is the first AMR system able to go from walk-by AMR to mobile AMR to full “mesh” network reading with the same meter interface unit, as opposed to a system of walk-by/mobile with one MIU and fixed network with another.
Ventura officials anticipate using the Mosaic with success. “You always have that historical data at your PC because it goes to a gateway, which calls it up. Plus, it’s wireless,” says Santoyo. “We’re able to have profiles of every customer in that series and tell them their amount of usage over the phone.” Presently, Ventura employs two full-time meter readers for all of the accounts, which are read bi-monthly.
“They are hoofing it as it is, so this is going to give them more of a cushion,” Santoyo notes of the FIREFLY units.