City Utilities of Springfield, MO, a multiservice utility delivering electricity, natural gas, and water services to more than 106,000 customers, needed a way to provide timely data about consumption and efficiency to customers across its three different service offerings. While existing technology offered visibility into gas and electricity consumption for the utility and its customers, the options for managing water usage were limited.
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.
The county seat of Shelby County, Sidney, Ohio straddles the Miami River Valley 40 miles north of Dayton and 85 miles west of Columbus. Named after Sir Philip Sidney, poet and member of British Parliament, the City is home to a population of a little over 21,000.
After deployment of an AMI system that didn’t work properly, initially forcing them to manually read meters, Highland Village was in need of a new vendor and product they could count on. Enter Badger Meter and the BEACON® AMA managed solution, with ORION® Cellular endpoints.
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.
Easton Suburban Water Authority (ESWA) is in the business of providing water to its customers, not managing technology. One summer, Technology Manager Tim Ryan had enough with focusing valuable time and resources on the utility’s Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) IT network and servers.
CMU was in the process of replacing more than 4,000 outdated water and electric meters when it determined that the project also presented an ideal opportunity to implement a systemwide advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) network.
Most recently, Frankfort Village officials decided to replace its water and electric meters and implement an advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) network to increase the operational efficiencies of its water and electric infrastructure in ways that would help improve employee safety, water and energy conservation and customer service while also reducing operational costs.
Municipality benefits from guaranteed savings, reduced costs, and customer service accolades
The city of Yakima services approximately 19,000 accounts within 27 square miles in the Yakima Valley. Frequent droughts, above average water loss and inaccurate meters prompted the city to search for a vendor who could provide a turnkey solution complete with a quality product line. The selected vendor also needed to have an endpoint that could withstand the extreme conditions experienced inside their meter pits including high humidity and varying temperatures.
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.
When Waterworks District 3 of Beauregard Parish, La., began to research new water meters to replace its aging system, it didn’t take long to decide that the BEACON AMA managed solution was the right fit.
Some wastewater applications require chlorine residuals greater than can be effectively monitored using DPD due to the oxidation of the Wurster dye to a colorless Imine. Such applications include industrial wastewater processes that inherently have a high chlorine demand thereby requiring a more robust monitoring method.
Situated along the Arkansas River and Lake Dardanelle in the heart of the Arkansas River Valley, Russellville, Arkansas is known for having plentiful amounts of high quality, fresh water.
How can your water utility protect present investments in technology while building onto those investments as you need, at your own pace?
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.
Venturi Inlet (Single Jet) - The Venturi inlet conditions the water into a jet directing the flow and force of water towards the tips of the impeller.
The FieldLogic™ Hand-held Device (HHD) is a reliable, flexible electronic device used to collect and store meter readings and program SmartPoint® modules. You can upload pre-programmed route information from our PC-based FieldLogic software using Wi-Fi or the device’s Ethernet-enabled communications/charging stand as an interface. The unit comes with built-in capacity for expanded uses.
Building smart cities takes technology and networking solutions with in-depth views and infrastructure control. The Sensus FlexNet® communication network is a long-range radio network that provides scalable and reliable two-way infrastructure.
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.
Maximize your revenue stream across a wide range of small commercial applications with our Intermediate MS Multi-Jets and capture low flow readings where turbine meters fall short.
Our SmartPoint® 510M non-pit set module is a radio transceiver that gives you RF inbound and outbound access to water measurements and ancillary device diagnostics. It’s designed for non-submersible/non-pit (surface-mount) installations. With two-way communication ability, it serves as a walk-by or drive-by endpoint, a fixed-base endpoint or any combination of those. This versatility gives you highly flexible data collection options and simplifies both current operations and network evolution.
Technology is on pace to reach a milestone of 26 billion devices connected through the Internet of Things (IoT) by the end of 2019. In the water industry, IoT capabilities are enabling utilities to leverage meter reading data collected via secure private cellular networks to satisfy multiple purposes — increasing its value exponentially. In this Water Talk interview, Kristie Anderson from Badger Meter discusses how advances in smart solutions, smart water, and smart city technology are delivering real-world benefits that seemed like futuristic promises just a few short years ago.
Smart water technology, which produces mountains of data, has the potential to improve water system operations and widely impact consumer habits. The latter, however, is only effective if the information is embraced by individuals. In this Water Talk interview, Ian McLeod, vice president of marketing for Master Meter, discusses how a newer method of connecting smart water solutions to a popular tech device will likely boost ratepayer engagement and lead to behavioral changes.
Finding new ways to capture and utilize data is important for utilities looking to improve operating efficiency and customer service. This interview with Frank Brooks and Dave Rubin from Aclara — a smart-infrastructure solutions partner for water, gas, and/or electric utilities — outlines ways to do both within a common infrastructure.
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.
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
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.
