Water utilities increasingly on the AMI bandwagon
In what is clearly still a nascent market for AMI deployment, much of the attention has been focused on efforts made by electric and gas utilities. However, the smart metering technology pursued by electric and water utilities also are readily capable of recovering water metering information. Regulatory mandates—such as Section 1252 of EPAct, which requires most electric utilities to offer time of use rates to their customers or justify why not—also are impacting the Boards of Directors of most publicly owned utilities, many of which own water assets. In addition, the benefits that can be arrived from AMI / Smart Grid are also applicable to water utility operations and customers. Oftentimes, utilities with a water component find that using the same infrastructure for electric, gas and water components enhances the business case benefits, and thus the water aspects of deployment actually support the overall electric utility business case.
Accordingly, the interest in AMI / Smart Grid within the water sector is picking up speed, particularly among public or city-owned municipal utilities. Water utilities also appear to be interested in advanced metering for benefits that may be uniquely important to this sector, such as conservation and fears about water supplies, which is a growing policy concern across the United States. As demand for water continues to increase and finite supplies shrink, water providers are looking for ways to effectively manage operations and customer use to ensure their ability to deliver water to meet future consumer needs. Understanding who is using how much water and when the water is used, which smart metering enables, becomes an important capability when faced with resource constraints.
In total, this represents a mammoth transformation for the water sector, which has typically been slow to embrace new technology, and in which the calculation and issuance of a quarterly bill for customers has been commonplace. This article will provide an overview of some of the leading water-utility AMI deployments currently taking place.
Notable deployments
In July 2008, ESCO Technologies Inc. announced that the City of New York's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has selected and formally contracted with ESCO's Aclara RF Systems Inc. to provide its Citywide AMI solution for the city's entire water service territory. The STAR Network system will operate within a 307-square-mile area encompassing the City's five boroughs and will work on the New York City Wireless Network (NYCWiN), a secure, 2.5-Ghz wireless system being installed by the city's Department of Environmental Protection.
The total value of purchase orders anticipated to be issued under this contract is approximately $68.3 million and the system is expected to be deployed over a three-year period with the initial orders expected later this month. This contract will allow the City of New York to automate its meter reading capabilities and to improve customer service for its approximately 875,000 metered endpoints serving nearly eight million customers, representing the largest municipal water utility in North America. According to available information, the City of New York plans to use Aclara’s STAR meter modules to collect interval data for current billing needs and to support other programs that are designed to allow the city and its customers to better manage water consumption, identify leaks and equipment problems, and effectively control other related operating costs. The STAR Network AMI system also will provide New York City's water customers with enhanced account information and accurate usage data.
The City of Chicago has contracted with Badger Meter to automate the city's meter reading process using the company's radio read system. The project is part of the Chicago Department of Water Management's long-term initiative to manage its water resources, which are provided by Lake Michigan. Once implemented, the new Orion Radio Frequency system will allow Chicago's Department of Water Management employees to drive down streets on a monthly basis and collect data broadcast from each meter's transmitter. The system will provide information that will alert the city to specific accounts with potential leaks, tamper conditions and meters that do not show usage. The city will use the information to troubleshoot potential problems and help improve customer service for its 162,000 metered-service water customers. As part of its evaluation process, Chicago required that the AMR technology selected provide connectivity to all of the water meters that are currently installed in its distribution system. As a long-time Badger customer, the city has a large population of installed Badger Recordall Series Disc, Turbo and Compound Meters. These meters, along with a small number of competitive meters, will be converted to the Orion AMR system as part of the project.
New technologies support water operations
In a typical configuration for water AMI deployment, an electric AMI system handles water metering by using a short range radio frequency (RF) link between the water meter and the electric meter, or between the water meter and the electric AMI system's supporting infrastructure. In the first case, water consumption data is transmitted over a low power link to the electric meter. Then the electric meter sends both the water and the electric data up through the communication "food chain" until they reach the "head-end" system, which performs the data network management function of the system. In the second case, the water meter reports to a data collection infrastructure also used by the electric meters.
In the Elster EnergyAxis AMI system, the electric meters form a resilient radio "mesh." Water and gas meters take advantage of the electric meters' mesh network without assuming the communications burdens of supporting it. The electric meters in the mesh network regularly communicate with each other, which is fine for electric meters but not for water or gas, because the frequent transmissions would drain the batteries. The EnergyAxis electric meters receive communications input from water and gas meters, but water and gas meters do not have full "partnership" in the mesh; they do not relay on other meters' data.
The Itron Openway AMI system, like many others, supports a local area communications concept called a "Home Area Network" (HAN). In this implementation, the 2-way HAN network extends from the electric meter into the customer's premises to provide information and tools that allow consumers to respond to TOU and other innovative electric rates. The HAN will support customer-owned displays, load control devices, and communicating thermostats, and is capable of gathering data for the utility from these and other sources, including other meters. Itron's Openway does not presently serve water meters, but Itron does offer its Fixed Network System 2.5 for water metering.
Along with investigating new AMI system technologies, many utilities with water components are also evaluating how the avalanche of new data that they will be obtaining should be managed. Consider, for example, the challenges of a utility with 50,000 customers that historically has only had to manage 50,000 monthly reads and pass the data to their CIS/billing system. With an advanced AMI system, that same utility now would want to consider the implications of managing hourly interval data for every customer, or approximately 36 million reads a month. It is clear that a robust meter data management system (MDM) is required.
New MDM systems being developed often include a specific water component. As one example, the Itron Enterprise Edition MDM version 6.0 is designed for the collection, validation, calculation, and management of utility metering data for AMI, AMR, and commercial and industrial metering deployments. It includes a number of significant enhancements, including a new application called Mass Market Customer Care that enables residential mass market customers to manage their energy and water usage and costs. A powerful aspect of the Itron MDM software is its storage capacity. The database is able to store hourly data from every customer meter for up to 10 years. This affords the water provider the ability to perform historical review and analysis on consumption and usage patterns to help manage supply issues against changes in usage and resource planning.
Automation Insight will continue to track water utility AMI deployments in addition to our coverage of electric and gas deployments.
About Automation Insight
Automation Insight is a complimentary monthly publication designed specifically for the utility industry and those serving the utility industry. For comments or suggestions on future article topics, please e-mail automation.insight@kema.com.
To receive Automation Insight by e-mail, please e-mail automation.insight@kema.com with 'subscribe' in the subject line.
Automation Insight is an opt-in subscription. KEMA does not sell or otherwise make public subscriber information and honors all ‘unsubscribe’ requests. To unsubscribe, please e-mail automation.insight@kema.com with 'unsubscribe' in the subject line.