Water loss control can be challenging, confusing, and time-consuming. Effective water loss control requires a multi-step process, including water audit (also referred to as a water balance), component analysis and intervention.
The City of Gordon Texas’s drinking water facility was struck by lightning. Thinking long term, and desiring the latest technology available, the City took this opportunity to upgrade their on-line instrumentation with a range of new continuous monitoring on-line instruments including chlorine analyzers, pH monitoring, temperature monitoring, and turbidity monitoring.
In January 2014, the city of Meadows Place, Texas, became the first city in Fort Bend County to fully convert to an Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) fixed-network system. At the same time, the city also implemented a complete meter change-out for its 1,600 customers. Both projects represent large initiatives for the self-proclaimed “little city” with a population of 4,600 citizens.
Jericho Water District (JWD) is one of the largest water districts in New York, serving 58,000 people through 18,604 residential and commercial service connections on Long Island.
Water utility operators are increasingly challenged by scrutiny and regulation on disinfection by-product (DBP) levels while trying to manage ever increasing coagulant costs in a tight budget environment.
Web-based software services, more commonly called cloud computing or Software as a Service (SaaS), are being implemented globally by users in virtually all types of organizations.
Located in Daviess County, Indiana, Washington is a small city that is poised for growth. An expansion of the heavily traveled I-69 highway has added new connections to the region between Evansville and Indianapolis, improving access to jobs, education and healthcare.
Once a small town not far from Cleveland, the City of Avon is now one of the fastest growing communities in northeast Ohio.
The Water Department in the City of Redmond, which serves approximately 28,000 residents, needed to streamline its process of collecting meter reads to save costs and improve data integrity.
After analyzing annual water loss audits for the city of Dallas, GA, the team discovered significant issues around non-revenue water. In 2014, real and apparent water loss accounted for 31.3 million gallons — nearly 20 percent of the city’s total water supplied for the year — which meant lost revenue for the city.
The city of Laredo, Texas, had been walking to read its 67,543 water meters – 59,138 residential and 8,405 commercial accounts – using a manual method that took up to ten staff on the streets nearly an entire month to read to meet a monthly billing schedule. With the dawn of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) systems, the City began their search for the right metering solution for the department’s needs.
Municipality benefits from guaranteed savings, reduced costs, and customer service accolades
Dried up reservoirs, cracked dirt and empty swimming pools are just a few of the visual reminders of the ongoing California drought. But what most people don’t see is the water providers, like Mark Sprague at the City of Fountain Valley, working tirelessly to keep the water running.
While utilities use sophisticated systems to supply clean water as well as collect and treat wastewater, the effort to manage incidents and outages leaves room for improvement. Water utilities often rely on manual processes to handle customer reports of leaks, loss-of-service or quality issues.
The Mueller Systems Mi.Hub data collector component of the Mi.Net® system enables true, two-way radio frequency communication between water meters equipped with Translator® encoder registers, Mi.Node W meter interface modules, Mi.Node E electric modules and the Mi.Host server.
Recordall Turbo Series Meters from Badger Meter are the smart choice for larger facilities, including hotels, apartment buildings, commercial and industrial buildings, manufacturing and processing plants, irrigation centers, and refining operations. The no-nonsense performance of this meter will help reduce your day-to-day maintenance and replacement costs, while capturing every billable penny through greater accuracy and efficiency.
Municipalities that supply water, electricity or gas – or any combination of the three services – need innovative ways to optimize their operations. The Mi.Net® Mueller Infrastructure Network for utilities meets that need.
Raw data from handheld field computers, drive-by AMR, fixed network, or 3G Cellular is easily made actionable under a single data management system.
E-Series Ultrasonic water meters from Badger Meter use solid-state technology in a compact, totally encapsulated, weatherproof, and UV-resistant housing, suitable for residential and commercial applications. Equipped with an easy-to-read, 9-digit LCD display, the Ultrasonic meter presents consumption, rate of flow, reverse-flow indication, and alarms. With no moving parts, the E-Series meter also improves reliability and has greater extended low flow accuracy compared to other positive displacement meters; accurate to +/-3%.
Aclara’s water pressure monitoring solution leverages our industry leading Aclara RF network to provide near real-time monitoring of water pressure throughout your distribution network. Whether used for leak detection or managing system-wide pressure, Aclara’s pressure monitoring solution is easy to install, reliable, low maintenance and integrated into your advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) environment.
Built on a century of water metering experience, the ORION® product family has provided utilities comprehensive Advanced Metering Analytics (AMA) for interval meter reading and data capture using both one-way and two-way communications.
You need timely data to make critical and prompt decisions for your community. With a battery-powered Sensus® Smart Gateway Sensor Interface, gas and water utilities can connect to a variety of applications in all locations—even in areas where no power or land-based communications are available.
The LoRa Alliance is a non-profit association of members who are collaborating together to drive the adoption of a communication protocol that offers long range, long battery life and open architecture. For water utilities specifically, the LoRa wide area network (WAN) would allow devices from multiple manufacturers to be able to communicate with each other across long distances.
Historically, a mechanical water meter has lost accuracy over its life time as parts wear and its mechanics deteriorate. However, the new Sonata meter from Master Meter is a non-moving parts product utilizing ultrasonic flow measurement sensor technology to help reduce inaccurate water measurement.
Turning off water service for non-payment is one of the hardest parts of the job for utility workers. It can also be dangerous as agitated consumers can become verbally and sometimes physically abusive seeing their water service shut off. A new remotely-controlled meter helps remove workers from the chance of physical confrontation.
AMI solutions play an important role in the drought in the U.S. today. It gives the utilities the ability to collect very granular data about the consumption, as well as things that are going on in the distribution network. Joe Ball, Director of Solutions Marketing for Water with Itron, sat down with Water Online Radio to tell us more.
Getting consumers to buy in to the value of water has always been tricky. Many people have been hearing messages about saving water for years but to little effect.
Utility workers will remember a time when meter reading meant driving to a customer’s house, walking up to their meter and manually recording water use. Those days were replaced with the now standard use of walk- and drive-by meter readers. That standard, like its predecessor, is poised to be supplanted by the next wave in metering technology.
E-Series ultrasonic meters offer the latest in innovative electronic metering technology with the release of the new e-series ultrasonic plus with integrated shut-off valve. Offering all of the benefits of the original e-series meter, the ultrasonic plus features a patented flow restriction valve that supports open, closed, and partial closed settings. It allows water utilities to actuate the valve remotely to temporarily restrict water service safely and efficiently. Watch the full video to learn more.
Every day you work to optimize your operations, protect quality, find innovative solutions, and reduce costs.
Water Meters|Automatic Meter Reading Systems|Fire Service Meters|Control Instrumentation
Maximize efficiencies. Enhance revenue. Improve customer service. Conserve precious natural resources. You can do it all with ARB® Utility Management Systems™ from Neptune. Since 1892, Neptune has provided utility metering systems that save time, money, and labor.
Mueller Water Products, Inc. manufactures and markets products and services that are used in the transmission and distribution of safe, clean drinking water and in water treatment facilities throughout North America.
Water Meter Manufacturer|National Chain of Distributors for Sales and Service|Award-Winning AMR Wireless RF Meters
Badger Meter is a leading manufacturer and marketer of flow measurement and control products, serving water utilities, municipalities and industrial customers worldwide. Measuring a variety of liquids, from potable water to oil and lubricants, to industrial processes, our products are known for their high degree of accuracy, long-lasting durability, and their ability to provide valuable and timely measurement information to our customers.
Aclara, now part of the Hubbell Power Systems family of brands, is a world-class supplier of smart infrastructure solutions (SIS) and services to more than 800 water, gas, and electric utilities globally. Aclara SIS offerings include smart meters and other field devices, advanced metering infrastructure and software and services that enable utilities to predict and respond to conditions, leverage their distribution networks effectively, and engage with their customers.
ABOUT AMR, AMI & METERING
Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) is a system and process used to remotely collect water meter data without the physical presence of personnel at the reading point. The system can be configured to read multiple meters at exactly the same point in time such as midnight or at the end of every month. Automatic Meter Readers (AMR) also known as SMART Meters afford suppliers with a cost effective solution to meter reading. Automatic meter readers use a real time wireless communication network to connect digital water meters with a central management system. Digital water meters use ultrasonic measurement technology to provide precise meter readings. AMR is a key driver of efficiency for water utilities by lowering costs by optimizing maintenance interventions and lowering reading operations. An effective AMR system can only work if the water meter has a pulse out where a radio transmitter will be attached to it. Multiple meter readings will then be transmitted to a device called the repeater. Using GPRS the readings will be transmitted to a server. The data can then be obtained from the server for use. AMR devices incorporate smart image recognition technology (OCR – Optical Character Recognition), BPL (Broadband Power line) as well as PLC (Power line Communications) technologies.
Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) are the systems beyond simply the meters that allow utility professionals to not only collect and analyze water usage, but also communicate back to metering devices, either on request or on a schedule. These systems include electronic/digital hardware and software providing continuously available remote communications. A typical AMI solution equips the customer with advanced solid state, electronic AMR meters that collect time-based data. These meters have the ability to transmit the collected data through commonly available fixed networks such as Broadband over Power Line (BPL), Power Line Communications (PLC), Fixed Radio Frequency (RF) networks, and public networks (e.g., landline, cellular, paging). The meter data are received by the AMI host system and sent to the Meter Data Management System (MDMS) that manages data storage and analysis to provide the information in useful form to the utility.
Utilities are turning toward advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) systems as part of larger “Smart Grid” initiatives. AMI extends current advanced meter reading (AMR) technology by providing two way meter communications, allowing commands to be sent toward the home for multiple purposes, including “time-of-use” pricing information, demand-response actions, or remote service disconnects.
