Spanish Fork continues to expand and improve upon its metering system.
Some 14 years ago, Spanish Fork
City, UT, was one of the pioneering cities in North America to adopt Automated
Meter Reading (AMR) in its water department, when it partnered with the Sensus
Metering Systems companies to utilize its TouchRead water meters throughout its
13-mile service territory. As Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) technology
has entered the utility marketplace through Sensus Metering Systems’ FlexNet
system, the city’s officials could not be certain that the municipality could
incorporate the improved system into its operations. Spanish Fork officials
welcomed any system that would increase efficiency in its town of 30,000
residents, with a population that continues in an upward growth mode, but
whether a tower-based approach to water meter reading could work in its central
Utah location—where the land slopes gently upward from Utah Lake to the
northwest, with elevations of 4,500 feet, to the southerly end of the Wasatch
Mountains in the southeast, with elevations of 5,200 feet—was the pivotal
question.
“Mainly, the way our town is laid
out with a few hills, we weren’t real sure on how well we were going to get our
readings,” says Paul Taylor, Spanish Fork’s water meter supervisor.
Sensus Metering Systems’ FlexNet
is a wireless, fixed-based technology that’s a single-tiered, tower-based
approach to meter reading. Information is collected at the water meter and is
transmitted to the tower, then onto the utility. The AMI technology features a
Federal Communications Commission (FCC)-licensed dedicated frequency.
“Throughout the years, we played
around with some of the radio-read stuff that Sensus Metering Systems had, but
we weren’t real excited about it,” notes Taylor. “After they came out with
FlexNet, we did a couple of test sites to determine it was the best way to go
for us.”
Spanish Fork city officials
decided to try a pilot test of six to eight months.
“We purchased the tower, got it
installed, and we had about 50 meters that I scattered throughout town,” he
says. “Some were close to the tower, some on the outskirts, and some were placed
evenly through the middle. We looked for potential trouble spots and put them
there.”
The pilot test proved successful.
Based on that and its past experience with Sensus Metering Systems’ technology,
plus an analysis of available options, the Spanish Fork City Council gave a nod
to full deployment of FlexNet for its utility customers. Over the next two
years, more than 16,000 water meters will be deployed, as well as 10,000
electric meters in addition to the thousands already installed and
operating.
Tom Galuska, marketing manager for
Sensus Metering Systems’ AMI Water and Gas division, says that the company
designs systems for its clients, based on radio propagation studies that analyze
topography and density.
 |
Photo: Sensus Metering Systems |
Spanish Fork’s Tower Gateway Base Station stores up to 30 days
worth of meter data. |
“Then we design a system to meet
those needs and overcome any concerns that they may have,” he adds. “Where we
install our collectors is typically on a high pole or water tower usually 100
feet or greater. The higher up you are with your antennae, the better coverage
you are going to have such as the way you see in towns with television stations
and radio stations—their towers are really high, so they can broadcast much
further.”
The FlexNet system’s 2-W
transmitter power and FCC licensing eliminates noise and other interference
typical on a radio frequency (RF) metering system, says Galuska.
“Its transmission has the best
chance of getting to that tower, because no one else is allowed on that band,”
he points out.
The FlexNet system also gives
Spanish Fork two-way communications to Sensus iCon electric meters, enabling
automated billing, on-demand reads, and remote connect/disconnect services. The
two-way communication also delivers hourly meter readings, leak detection, and
tamper notification for culinary and pressurized irrigation water meters.
Installation upgrades proved to be
a fairly seamless transition because of the existence of the TouchRead system,
says Taylor.
“The plug-and-play nature of the
TouchCoupler connection allows for easy, waterproof connections, but remains
modular in the event of a future meter change,” he adds.
An added benefit of the system for
Spanish Fork’s utility department is its ability to read both water and electric
services over the same network.
“The simplicity of the tower-based
RF solution yields low operations and maintenance costs over the life of the
project and supports our requirements for rapid growth with minimal
infrastructure,” notes Guy Chang, the city’s supervisor of electricity metering
services.
“The open systems TCP/IP
information system provides immediate compatibility with our existing networking
and billing operations,” he continues. “We are big believers in the power of the
Sensus licensed-band RF solution which mitigates our future risk over the life
of the project.”
One of the biggest problems
Spanish Fork has had in its water department is keeping meter readers,
acknowledges Taylor.
“We hire part-time people for
about 20 hours a month,” he says. “We expect them to work the first five to
seven days and they’re laid off the rest of the month. During our summer months,
it’s hard to keep people employed. Hopefully, with this system, it will
eliminate the problem we have with them quitting on us throughout the
summer.”
Taylor says many people don’t care
for the job as it is structured—sometimes, they get trouble from dogs, or they
don’t like to go the extra mile to get the meter readings that are needed if
there’s an apparent problem. The FlexNet system saves on labor costs, as meter
readers are no longer needed in the field.
“The biggest benefit of a
fixed-based system is the ability of a municipality to collect data with more
frequency,” says Galuska. “What they do with that data is take that information
to analyze their operations and improve on overall efficiencies throughout
everything. Plus, they can take the manpower not needed for reading and
distribute that to other areas of the business where they can use them with
better efficiency.”
FlexNet installation was executed
rather simply, according to Taylor. Presently, Spanish Fork has a touch pad on
top of all of its meters. The meter readers read the meter by touching the lid
with a wand. Retrofitting the water meters with the new TouchCoupler entailed
having a company change out the meters by taking the touch pad off of the lid
and installing an end point, with a sensor snapped into the end point.
“It’s a simple operation and
that’s what we like about it best,” acknowledges Taylor. “There’s not a lot of
hardwiring. It’s just a plug-and-play nature.”
Another issue that he believes the
FlexNet system may rectify is customer-billing disputes.
 |
Photo: Sensus Metering Systems |
The tower is an outdoor unit that now has a shed built around
it. |
“The end point reads the meter
every hour and it will transmit all of the readings every six hours to our
tower,” he says. “At that point, we can pull this up on the Internet and
actually see their usage.”
Taylor explains that the water
meters in Spanish Fork are read in 1,000-gallon increments.
“Anything less, we don’t worry
about it,” he says. “In a few cases, already with the Sensus Metering Systems’
FlexNet system, you can see the 1,000-gallon usage in an hour. It’s really
helped us with these customers to say they’ve used a certain amount of water at
a certain time of day. They may say they weren’t home on that day, and you can
tell them that somebody used the water. It takes water to make the meter
run.
“It pinpoints who might have been
there, and what it was used for,” Taylor continues. “That’s really been a
benefit to us so far on the system.”
Sensus Metering Systems’ FlexNet’s
advanced leak detection system is another advantage for Spanish Fork, Taylor
says. He anticipates one of the many benefits from the ability to use FlexNet
year-round will be catching leaks in “real time,” with the ability to make
immediate repairs and avoid ongoing water waste. Currently, Spanish Fork’s water
meters are not read from November through April.
“Come April, we go through and see
how someone used a lot of water,” he adds. “We have to find out why. If they had
a leak from November—that’s five months or so, of wasted water. I’m hoping with
this system we’ll be able to read the meters 12 months out of the year and catch
these leaks before they create a problem.”
The ability to collect ongoing
water use data on a daily basis, rather than to wait for seasonal information
gathering, will also enable the city to collect revenues year-round.
Streamlining billing cycles is another benefit Taylor hopes Spanish Fork River
will gain with having Sensus Metering Systems’ FlexNet system.
 |
Photo: Sensus Metering Systems |
The Sensus Metering Systems’ FlexNet system’s 2-W transmitter
power and FCC licensing eliminates noise and interference typical on a RF
metering system. |
“It saves time on our meter
readings,” he says. “We can actually pull our readings off on the first day of
every month. Right now, our part-time people can get a reading anywhere from the
first to the seventh of the month, so the customer might have 40-something days
on bill, and then the next month 20-something days. We’re hoping this will
eliminate that and make it easier to bring in readings, so when you get billed
for the month, it’s billed for the actual month of 30 or 31 days.”
Sensus Meterings’ FlexNet system
also aids in detecting tampering, Taylor says. “You get the occasional few
people who are messing around,” he states. “They think if they cut the wire,
nobody’s going to know their meter’s bad. All that does is send us a big flag
that the meter is not reading. When in reality, the meter is reading, it’s just
not sending the reading. The register is still there—it’s still registering
every gallon they use.”
Catching water tampering is a
critical benefit at a time when many areas throughout the US are dealing with
water shortages, Galuska says.
Still, there are always challenges
inherent in water meter reading, and Taylor is confident the FlexNet system will
address them. He says the water meters use the electric meters as a ‘buddy’
backup system to transmit information to the tower.
“If the water meter for some
reason can’t make it through the pit, it can transmit through the electric meter
and that electric meter helps the reading get through to the tower,” says
Taylor. “The water meters will look for any electric meter as the easiest route
to the tower.”
Galuska adds that, while the
transmitters on the water meters are designed to communicate directly with the
tower, there are cases in which the water transmitter is located in an area of
weak coverage or in a hard-to-reach location. “It only has to travel as far as
the electric meter and the electric meter will collect the information and then
transmit it,” he says.
There are times when natural
disasters can tamper with communications systems, such as during hurricanes.
Galuska says that the FlexNet system is designed to have a backup operation in
times of such disasters. “Within our TGB—which is our Tower Gateway Base
Station—where the reads are collected, we have a 30-day battery back-up,” he
explains. “In the case of Hurricane Katrina, we had a couple of towers going
into Mississippi and New Orleans, and when the communications went down from the
tower back to the utility, the TGBs kept collecting data. When the system was
put back up, it just kept transmitting to it all of those reads that it had. It
will store 30 days worth of data.”
Taylor confesses to not being “the
most computer-literate person,” but added that using the FlexNet system has been
“really easy to figure out.” The municipality’s partnership with Sensus Metering
Systems in training and troubleshooting has made the learning curve a seamless
transition, he comments.
Taylor expects maintenance on
Sensus Metering Systems’ FlexNet system to be relatively low.
“We had to go up and clean the
filters on the tower itself,” he says. “To me, that’s pretty minimal.”