Mobile Area Water & Sewer System Using MeterSense Data Management Software To Enhance Service To Commercial And Industrial Accounts

Mobile Area Water & Sewer System (MAWSS) is using MeterSense, Harris Utilities’ meter data management (MDM) solution, to provide some of its largest commercial and industrial (C&I) customers with advanced meter data analytics that enhance customer service.

Located in Mobile, Alabama, MAWSS provides water and sanitary sewer services to approximately 88,000 customers. Approximately 4,500 of those customers are C&I accounts. A six-month pilot program conducted in 2012 and which included approximately 550 of MAWSS’ largest C&I accounts, helped demonstrate how advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) could improve operational efficiency and customer service.

The utility’s AMI solution, which includes MeterSense in conjunction with Sensus FlexNet meters, will automate routine functions such as meter reads and read validations, improve meter read accuracy and furnish customers with data-rich information. MAWSS hopes these changes will help the utility deliver even more timely and accurate meter readings, minimize estimates and bill averaging, and reduce the number of calls end users make to its call centers.

MAWSS is hopeful MeterSense will yield further benefits. For example, the utility plans to use the solution’s native analytics functions to calculate and track water losses across its grid. It also aims to use such tools to understand how rainfall volumes in the Mobile area—which are nearly double that of the national average—affect demand for water in MAWSS’ service area.

“MeterSense’s native analytics tools are among the most sophisticated on the market,” said Norm Daigle, Executive Vice President of Harris Utilities SmartWorks, the smart grid innovation engine of Harris Utilities that created MeterSense. “Water utilities such as MAWSS can take advantage of the solution’s continuous-consumption validation routine and loss-analysis tool to quickly identify and resolve sources of lost revenue.”

MAWSS plans to convert all of its C&I accounts to AMI by 2014. It expects to draw on intelligence derived from MeterSense throughout the life of the project to make its operations more efficient and its service to end users better than ever before.

About Mobile Area Water & Sewer System
Mobile Area Water & Sewer System (MAWSS) provides water and sanitary sewer services to more than 88,000 customers in the greater Mobile community. The utility draws water from the J. B. Converse Reservoir, which spans 3,600 acres and is continually fed by groundwater, streams and rainfall. As one of the largest environmental and public-health protection institutions in the Mobile area, MAWSS is dedicated to providing exemplary drinking water to area homes and businesses while protecting the environment. For more information, visit www.mawss.com.

About Harris Utilities
Harris Utilities is the leading provider of utility technology in North America and the Caribbean. Its SmartWorks division is a group of leading engineers, software innovators and product specialists united to develop original and focused applications directly for the smart grid market that are easy to implement and most relevant to consumers. Harris Utilities SmartWorks’ goal is to create whole new categories of products that will transform the industry and evolve the smart grid.

Harris Utilities’ smart grid technology includes two key solutions. The first is MeterSense, a scalable, configurable and powerful meter data management (MDM) solution that quickly manages and intelligently interprets growing volumes of critical smart meter data. The second, CustomerConnect, is a customer engagement solution that gives customers direct, web-based access to account information and unprecedented insight into resource use which helps utilities demonstrate the value of, and power behind, their smart infrastructure investments.