Metro Water Services Chooses MeterSense To Streamline Business Processes And Boost Customer Service

Metro Water Services (MWS) has chosen MeterSense, the meter data management (MDM) solution from Harris Utilities, to automate routine processes, enhance service to consumers and draw new insight from meter interval data.

MWS is a department of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County. It provides water, wastewater treatment and stormwater management services across more than 182,000 meters to consumers in Davidson County and portions of Rutherford and Williamson Counties. In 2002, the utility reasoned that in order to keep operational costs, and by extension rates to consumers, low it had to exchange its conventional water meters for automated meter reading (AMR) technology. The utility hoped that by remotely reading as many meters as possible, it could reduce time spent by technicians in the field.

In order to accommodate the replacement of such a large number of meters, MWS staged its AMR implementation in phases over a 10-year period. During the last two years of its meter exchange program—as the use of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) became more widespread and cost effective for water utilities—MWS partnered with Sensus to implement the vendor’s FlexNet advanced metering technology. MWS completed its AMI and AMR deployment in 2011. Today, approximately 45,000 of the utility’s water meters run on AMI technology.

To help manage the influx of interval data gathered by its advanced meters, MWS needed an MDM solution. It chose MeterSense because of the solution’s demonstrated track record among water utilities and because MeterSense integrated seamlessly with not only Sensus FlexNet metering technology but also enQuesta 4—the customer information system installed at MWS and developed by Systems & Software, a proud member of the Harris Utilities family.

More accurate meter reads and deeper grid intelligence: just two of MeterSense’s many benefits
Proven performance and trouble-free integration are only two of a number of benefits MWS hopes to take away from its MeterSense implementation. When the solution goes live on MWS’s systems in 2014, the utility expects to:

• deliver bills that are always based on accurate and current usage data,
• provide real-time consumption data to consumers,
• respond to service requests quicker than ever before,
• identify system leaks and reduce other incidents of unaccounted-for consumption, and
• automate account activation and de-activation processes, which are particularly commonplace given the large population of college and university students in Nashville.

Norm Daigle, executive vice-president of Harris Utilities SmartWorks—the smart grid innovation engine of Harris Utilities that created MeterSense—said the MWS implementation confirms the additional value that an MDM solution can bring to a utility’s AMI and AMR technologies.

“Metro Water stands to realize significant benefits from the introduction of MeterSense,” he said. “Although the utility has made great strides in automating routine functions via its new metering technologies, MeterSense will take things even further. It will enable MWS to derive even more intelligence from its interval meter data and therefore make better informed decisions about resource allocation, infrastructure investments and rate changes.”

Sophisticated and powerful, MeterSense enables utilities to draw deep insight from grid data, make better operational decisions and serve customers more efficiently than ever before.

About Metro Water Services
Metropolitan Water Services is a municipal water, wastewater and stormwater utility with approximately 235,000 water, sewer and stormwater customer accounts. MWS maintains a 533 square mile service area, including more than 2,900 miles of water and 3,000 miles of wastewater piping. The water system includes two water treatment and three wastewater treatment plants. For more information, visit www.nashville.gov/Water-Services.

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.