The Advantages Of Meters Generating Their Own Power

Scott Williamson, CEO of Capstone Metering, discusses the advantages of Capstone’s patented rechargeable battery technology housed within the meter.

The following is an excerpt from a Q&A with Water Online Radio. Click on the Radio Player above to hear the full interview.

Water Online Radio: How does Capstone Metering serve the market?

Scott: We have a turnkey solution with software that allows us to do everything within the residential water meter, from generating power to reading pressure.

We have valve controls on the system, all built within the seven and a half inches, so it replaces legacy technology without having to do expensive cutout and replacement of old technologies or legacy technologies. From that point, we're able to do a whole lot more because the intelligence is in the meter.

As an example, we can send back-flow alerts directly from the meter to the municipal district or the customer. We can go to the next level, because the intelligence is in the meter, for a change.

Water Online Radio: Tell me more about the power generation?

Scott: We patented rechargeable battery technology for power generation at the meter level. We can generate power and store the power with a rechargeable battery at a low enough flow that it works. That's a big breakthrough.

Water Online Radio: What's the advantage of having a meter that generates power?

Scott: The first advantage is that you have so many more features available to you as you deploy the system, for example, pressure reading, ball valve control, the ability to maintain alerts at the meter and the meter sending out alerts automatically. We can do more and more as the meter itself becomes an automated device, just like your refrigerator or anything else that's becoming automated within the home.

The municipal districts need that so that they can be more efficient. When they are more efficient, they save money and they have a much better system because of it, whether it's leak detection, whether it's higher accuracy readings, whether it's being able to turn the meter on and off instead of sending a truck out there. It's being able to balance the pressure of your network because we're able to look at all the pressure and monitor that to see where the anomalies are, including system leaks…

Click on the Radio Player above to hear the full interview.