Water Efficiency May 2012 : Page 14
for utilities considering an AMI and streamline information technology (IT) support and turns meter data into valuable knowledge, Fiut says. “Using a city of 100,000 as an example, consider how much data logging information is read in a year’s time,” he explains. “Reading 100,000 meters 24 hours per day times 365 days per year equals 876 million reads per year. Where is a util-ity going to store all of that data—not just today, but in future years? MDM is the data repository that allows the utility to extract the data and conduct advanced analysis on it. “These advanced systems are growing in popularity be-cause of their ability to help utilities improve their financials through the capture of lost water revenue and the inherent savings of automated meter reading,” he adds. “Additional operational benefits of an AMI system include the analysis of meter read data by all departments, including engineer-ing, meter shop, customer service, accounting, distribution, operations, and conservation.” Nearly two years ago, Aclara rolled out an enhancement to its AMI network with two-way end points. “We believe in giving utilities a robust series of choices for their end points, so the backwards compatibility was job number one,” says Paul Lekan, vice president of marketing and communications. “We had several million units deployed in the fi eld and quite a few are approaching that 20-year window.” Th e benefi t of the two-way communication is to provide a time synchronization to the endpoints. Th e read interval rate can be set remotely, allowing the utility take a read of its entire meter population and have them correlate with each other from a time standpoint, he adds. “From a billing standpoint, now they can provide con-sumers their usage based on clock time versus hourly buck-ets. Utilities can plug this data into their analytic engines from an operational, planning, and financial standpoint, allowing utilities to use data to better control and operate their systems,” says Lekan. In a traditional water loss analysis, outflows from water production are balanced against the meter population or billed use to determine the amount of water not accounted for in the revenue stream. There’s a need to adjust the data for the anomalies for meter population’s readings, which is alleviated through time-synchronized data, Lekan says. “You get a much fi ner resolution in your analytics with this data,” he adds. “Some utilities are taking advantage of the more advanced meter functionality for larger or high-usage customers. You can mix and match the solution, so we’re very careful to ensure utilities have choices. Th ey can deploy assets in the fi eld that make the most sense for what they’re trying to achieve.” In general, utilities that have had drive-by systems more than 10 years old are transitioning to fi xed-network, Lekan says. “Five years from now, we will be talking about the ability of the AMI data and AMI network to provide a more robust analysis of what the system is doing, allowing us to achieve the conservation, effi ciency, and fi nancial results that are go-ing to be required in the future,” says Lekan. “A lot of utilities are facing the perfect storm: aging infrastructure and trillions of dollars required to replace infrastructure,” says Lekan. “We’re not going to have the money to replace all of the pipes that need to be replaced. Utilities are taking in less money per capita. They require a significant amount of money to do general maintenance. And then, there’s a global economic situation that puts a constraint on the ability to invest. AMI data is now being used to better target the point of the infrastructure that needs the most attention.” John Sala, director of marketing for collection hard-ware and software for Neptune Technology group, says one of the challenges faced by water utilities is that they’re entering the arena of AMI, “which has been somewhat defined by the electric industry, but they are very different from electric utilities.” Neptune manufactures a fi xed-network AMI system based on R450 MIU technology, as well as N_SIGHT R450 Host Soft ware. Sala, who worked in electric utilities for 16 years before working for Neptune, says water utilities face “substantial challenges” compared to an electric utility. “Th ey are serving customers in situations vastly diff erent in both the infrastructure and architecture, as well as system operability and moving the data around the utility to get value from it,” he says. “Th ey don’t typically have major IT infrastructure or large IT organizations to implement complex technologies,” adds Sala. “AMI defi nitely fi ts that bill. It’s complex tech-nology, so we’re trying to address that gap between what is 14 WATER EFFICIENCY WWW.WATEREFFICIENCY.NET