How three different communities or water companies are instituting AMR/AMI systems into meter reading and water management
“It is the ultimate in water
conservation.”
When speaking of automatic meter
reading (AMR)/Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) systems, that’s the opinion
of Charlie Gray, the CEO of the Chesterfield County Rural Water Company (CCRWC),
a private, non-profit corporation in South Carolina. “I don’t know of any other
utility where you can get this much information for your customers,” he says.
“It tells you everything you want to know.”
In the past, active meters were
checked maybe once a month, inactive meters once a quarter. With AMR systems,
utility companies have the ability to read water meters at any time of the day
or be notified if there is a problem.
“Without AMR, there is no exact
accounting for water use,” says Steve Zip, account executive for government
markets with Johnson Controls Inc. “With AMR, you can get an exact calculated
use of water.”
The CCRWC is one of a growing
number of water companies and utilities that are discovering how AMR/AMI systems
not only save water, but also save money. Here are the stories of how three
different communities or water companies are instituting AMR/AMI systems into
meter reading and water management.
The Village of Wellington,
Florida
Using an AMR system is nothing new
for the Village of Wellington. “We’ve long been aggressive in using technology
and using the best available means of reading meters,” says Tom Amburgey, Chief
Information Officer of the Village of Wellington.
The Village has had an AMR system
in place for about 10 years; until recently, it was a drive-by system. However,
Amburgey explains, that former system was not a good fit for Wellington. There
was also a desire to cut costs and improve customer service.
“We found the Badger system and
the ability to hook it through WiFi a lot better for us,” he says.
So, the Village of Wellington is
replacing its water meters with Badger Meter meters that are equipped with ORION
transmitters. “It’s a hybrid system that uses 900 megahertz radio frequency to
read the meters,” explains Amburgey. “It allows for drive-by reading, touch
reading, or through WiFi, like we’re going to use it.”
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Photo: Sensus Metering Systems
Chesterfield utilized existing company-owned
properties for deploying its FlexNet system. |
A series of collectors have been
built in strategic spots throughout the community. These collectors will
communicate back to the main depository through the WiFi system.
“It’s fairly standard technology
today in terms of the radio,” says Amburgey. “What makes it unique and valuable
is the ability to have these collectors that pull stuff back to read through the
WiFi. They call them gateways.”
Amburgey says that, with this
Badger system, the water department will be able to read approximately 20,000
water meters in 15 minutes. The meters will be read once a day. “We’ll have
great ability to detect leaks and problems,” he says.
One aspect that makes the Village
of Wellington different from many other communities is that it has a high number
of seasonal residents, which, in turn, means a lot of meters that are turned on
and off throughout the year. The Badger system will allow these meters to be
operated more simply, but will also allow the Village to better monitor the
meters for problems.
“You can think of it as two layers
of networks going on here,” says Denise Barton marketing director with Tropos
Network, which is the network supplying the WiFi.
It is a mesh network system,
rather than a point-to-point wireless network. This means there is a redundancy
in the data being sent, so it is not all passing through a single tower, and in
a place where hurricanes are prevalent, having multiple levels of network points
means a network that keeps working.
Or as Barton says, “There is the
non-tethered megahertz network. And then there is an overlay on top of that to
the collectors.”
This is where the Tropos Network
fits in. This network brings in all of the data and communicates all of the
meter information back to the central location.
Amburgey says the Village was
looking at a system that, if it was going to blanket the entire community, could
monitor other areas, as well.
“We wanted to use it for security
cameras, for example,” he continues. “We wanted the opportunity to use it for
systems outside of AMR. When we started evaluating fixed-based systems, the
company we formally worked with was proprietary. The only thing we would have
been able to do was read the meters over it. We wanted more flexibility than
that.”
When investigating the systems
available, the Village leaders evaluated what they perceived to be best in terms
of distribution, the strongest radio technology, cost, and customer service.
“Badger scored on top for us,”
says Amburgey. “And this is saving us about 50 dollars a meter.”
The Village of Wellington
considers itself to be a progressive community and one that always provides the
best services with the least intrusion to its 60,000 residents, which is one
reason AMR technology was initiated in the first place. Wellington leaders also
feel it is important to be fiscally responsible.
The area covered by the Village’s
water department is over 40 square miles, and it required many people to
effectively manually read the water meters.
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Photo: Sensus Metering Systems
The tower gateway base station collects meter information for Chesterfield water customers. |
“When you look at the business
efficiency, even 10 years ago when the cost of the AMR system was a little
greater, the payback was excellent,” says Amburgey. “It gave us the ability to
simply drive by without having to walk through yards. It gave us flexibility on
where water meters could be placed, as well. You didn’t have to worry about
meter readers having access to your house or property once a month, just for
emergencies.”
With the drive-by AMR system, the
Village of Wellington water department was able to reduce the number of staff
that was reading meters; hence, making them available to fix leaks and other
maintenance issues. By moving to the Badger system and WiFi, the Village will
now be able to cover its entire area with a single meter reading, with a person
who will be out in the field to do re-readings or for special situations. The
rest of the staff will be allocated to check water lines and handle customer
service.
Installation of the Badger system
began in late November 2009, with an anticipated finish date of May 2009.
Gateway collectors have been placed strategically around the Village and its
service area.
“Badger came out and did the field
site survey,” says Amburgey. “They do frequency checks and monitoring. Each
collector can handle only so much data.”
The collectors are placed, then,
where they are thought to be most efficient; however, as the system is
installed, locations are being fine-tuned. “We’ll do tests and sometimes find
gaps,” he adds. “So we go back and add units as necessary.”
Amburgey also believes the Badger
system will help the Village of Wellington do a better job conserving water.
“It’s an intuitive system,” he
says.
As the system builds historical
data into its database, it will be able to create a profile for users, which can
help detect leaks or unusual water usage. The water department can deduce a
historical usage level for a customer and, thanks to daily readings, note
whether or not there is an unusual increase.
“Because we’ve reallocated our
staff, we can drive around the area to make sure there is no water leaking at
the meter or water pooling on the road,” says Amburgey. “We can also check for
backend leaks or inefficiencies in the processing of the water.”
The Village of Wellington is
retrofitting their lift stations with an apparatus, multi-smart controllers that
will allow remote command control.
“An alarm that used to take 15
minutes for a response can now be controlled immediately,” says Amburgey. “We’ll
be able to turn off and on pumps remotely. When you start talking about sewer
spills or hurricanes, the ability to control the lift stations gives us better
management capabilities throughout the city.”
The Badger system will also offer
an option for residents to buy a unit that allows them to read their own water
meter.
“The customer could turn their
water off, and then make sure the meter isn’t reading anything,” says Amburgey.
“Or, they could see how much water they are using in their sprinkler system. It
allows customers to be proactive in their own water conservation.”
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Photo: Badger Meter
GALAXY installation in Shreveport, LA |
Chesterfield County, South
Carolina
The installation of the AMR system
in Chesterfield County has been a collaborative effort between the private
non-profit business Chesterfield County Rural Water Company and the water
utilities of the towns of Chesterfield and Cheraw, SC.
Chesterfield County is a large
county in size, almost 850 square miles, and the Chesterfield County Rural Water
Company provides the water utility for the majority of the county residents.
“I had three trucks and two
individuals in each truck,” explains Charlie Gray, Chesterfield County Rural
Water Company CEO. “It would take 10 to 12 days to read the meters. That was
totally unacceptable, not only from a manpower standpoint, but also from the
fuel costs to drive across the county.”
The water company was using a
touch-read system, but Gray decided to move on to another system. He first
considered a drive-by system, but then heard about the Sensus FlexNet
system.
“We went with that system because
the Sensus meters are all continuously upgradeable,” says Gray. “The technology
expands from one generation to the next generation without having to replace
anything.”
A propagation study was done to
measure the topography and the distribution of meters. A recommendation of
towers is derived from this study.
“Typically, they’ll use cell phone
towers,” says Gray.
However, the cost to essentially
rent space for antennae on these towers was between $600–800 a month per
tower.
“At first, it looked like we could
go with eight towers, but we ended up needing 14,” he says. This made using the
cell phone towers cost prohibitive. So Gray decided another route.
“We used water tanks instead,”
adds Gray. “When I was looking at this, I decided to ask local towns if they
wanted to join us in this effort. Cheraw and Chesterfield agreed.”
The carrot Gray dangled in front
of the communities was a cooperative deal that would benefit everyone. He asked
if antennae could be attached to the water tanks in those communities. In
return, the communities would be able to use the fixed-base computer system to
read their meters.
This worked well for the town of
Chesterfield, which was facing a population of aging water meters that were
becoming less efficient, according to David Huntley, town administrator. “We had some that were on an average
read because they had quit working or were unreadable,” he says.
Knowing the meters had to be
replaced, Huntley says the question was whether to install new manual readers or
to investigate the new technologies available. “Of course, as economic times got
tighter, it was more important to get a bigger bang for the buck,” he says.
Johnson Controls approached
Huntley and the town of Chesterfield with a program they had in place that would
allow the project to pay for itself over the time of financing.
“We could get what we needed for
efficient readings while saving on operating costs,” says Huntley.
Chesterfield contracts its water
supply through the Chester County Rural Water Company, so it made sense for them
to form the partnership. “Then it became a matter of putting the database
together as to how many meters we already had, what types of meters, and then
going through the process of having Johnson Controls go change them out,” says
Huntley.
Both Gray and Huntley agree that
the AMR has increased water efficiency efforts in their community.
“One advantage we found is that
during some unusually cold weather we’ve had, we were able to go into the system
and identify potential leaks,” says Huntley. “We then notified the customers of
the potential of a broken pipe. Our customers were very appreciative of
that.”
Gray adds that another water
management benefit is the ability to put parameters on water use. Some parts of
South Carolina are in a drought crisis right now, he says.
“You can set a parameter where a
customer isn’t supposed to use more than, say, 100 gallons of water in a 24-hour
period. The system can alert you if any customer goes over that parameter, so
you can actually monitor for drought purposes.”
Same with irrigation purposes, he
adds. “If you tell people they can’t irrigate, you can mark those meters as
inactive. If someone turns one on, you’ll be alerted immediately that water is
flowing through an inactive meter.”
It’s also done a lot to improve
customer service. “If a customer complains about a high bill, you can break down
their usage for them and pinpoint when there was a lot of water used,” says
Huntley.
Customers learning more about
their own water usage habits can help conserve water, Gray adds. Being able to
see when and how much water is being used allows customers to better understand
how (and how much) they use water.
Chesterfield County Rural Water
Company began their installation of the system in August 2008, and it was
completed in January 2009. Chesterfield’s installation began around Thanksgiving
2008.
One thing that Huntley would like
to see with the system is the ability to turn water off remotely.
“We understand that’s an issue
with battery life at this point,” he says. The battery is drained too quickly on
the remote control, but Huntley hopes the next generation of batteries will be
efficient for their needs.
Gray says he has asked to be put
on a beta testing for the homeowners to have a thermostat-like programmable
meter in the house to help them monitor their own water use.
“Say you don’t want to use more
than 30 gallons of water a day,” says Gray. “You can program this device to set
off an alarm if you go over that amount.”
Clark Public Utilities, Vancouver,
Washington
In Vancouver, officials at Clark
Public Utilities have decided to partner with Sensus Metering Systems to deploy
a pilot program of the FlexNet wireless smart grid system.
Clark Public Utilities is a
medium-sized utility, with 30,000 water services, as well as 180,000 electric
services. When the utility decided it wanted to investigate AMI systems, it
approached the market with a well-defined request for proposal, knowing exactly
what they wanted to accomplish with the system. The utility then sorted through
a number of vendors and took a two-step approach to the implementation.
Sensus was the vendor that was
brought in for the pilot project, which included three data collectors (also
known as tower gateway base stations) on existing Clark Public Utility tower
assets: Two on radio towers and another on top of a water tower. Those locations
provide radio coverage for a large service area, but the entire service area
will not be covered until the pilot program is over and mass deployment is used.
Radio coverage is redundant, meaning that meters are reporting to more than one
destination.
Clark Public Utilities is
deploying the pilot program for both the water and electrical services.
Initiated in December 2008, the water meter readings are active as of late
February 2009. During the pilot, Sensus is hosting the data center, but Clark
Public Utilities will take over once the pilot is complete.
Like the other communities, the
AMI system allows Clark Public Utilities to keep a more watchful eye on water
usage and help cut other costs. The AMI system will allow utility companies to
better meet the increasing regulations coming from state and federal utilities
about conservation.
The
Clark Public Utilities pilot program is a one-year program, and the utility will
have a number of options on how to proceed. They can decide to continue with the
mass deployment or try another program. The utility also has the option to add
more gateway stations and meters.