Water Efficiency July/August 2012 : Page 27
The same holds true with con-servation, another of the intangible benefits that water utilities can receive thanks to AMR/AMI systems. It’s true that many municipalities are fortunate to have plenty of access to water. But others consider drinking water to be a scarce resource. These utilities need to teach their clients to consume less water. The data secured by AMI systems can help do that. Scott Williamson, president and chief executive officer of Carrollton, TX-based Capstone Metering, says the key is to provide customers with instant feedback. With AMI/AMR, water utilities can provide their customers with a log in so that these consumers can im-mediately access their water consump-tion data. They can see if they’ve used significantly more water this week than last. They can then take the steps necessary to consume less water. Maybe, for instance, they’ll see that by leaving their lawn sprinklers on all night, their water consump-tion jumped significantly. Consumers might make the effort to shut their sprinklers off when the sun goes down, lightening their water bills and conserving water in the process. “When you get to the AMR/ AMI segment, you get an op-portunity to provide real feedback to customers. You can give them a good snapshot of what their water consumption looks like,” says Williamson. “Once utilities do that, the odds are much better that their customers will work with them in a natural conservation mode to improve the overall water efficiency of the system.” Williamson says that he is seeing more water utilities using AMR/AMI technology in this way. But he admits that the movement is still in its early stages. Many water utilities are still barely tapping the full potential of the technology, he states. And Trevor Hill agrees. As president and chief executive officer of Global Water, a Phoenix-based company that owns and oper-ates water and wastewater utilities in Arizona, Hill has long advocated that water utilities use AMR/AMI technol-ogy to actually change the consump-tion behavior of their customers. Unfortunately, he says, most utili-ties are a long way from doing this. Not nearly enough are relying on AMI to not just collect data, but to use it to tell customers exactly how they can reduce their own water consumption. Global Water has taken the next step, thanks to its FATHOM suite of technology products designed to bring real-time water-usage data to custom-ers. Through this technology, water utility consumers can log onto their own secure Web portal to see how much water they are actually consum-ing at any given time. Customers can also see if they are consuming a significantly higher amount of water than their neighbors. This, Hill says, is one of the most “It takes effort; it takes vision to make this move. You need someone within the utility who can create the awareness that new isn’t necessarily a bad thing.” powerful ways to convince customers to use less water. “For some reason, humans seem to react to being told that they are using 25% more water than are their neighbors,” says Hill. And peer pressure isn’t the only way to change consumer behavior. Hill says that utilities can use real-time consumption data to set price points that could encourage their customers to cut back on their water usage. Depending on how much water consumers use, they’ll either pay a lower or higher rate. This, Hill says, is also a strong motivator. “We know that the only way to change customer behavior is through price signals and peer pressure,” says Hill. “But for these two elements, it’s hard to change consumer behavior in meaningful ways. Th e trick to convinc-ing people to change their behavior is not just to have AMI. Once you have the data, you have to make it available to your consumers. You have to feed it back to them in real time. Th at is what you need to make a change of any materiality on conservation.” Hill says that the customers at the utilities run by Global Water are mak-ing changes in their water-consumption habits thanks to this real-time data. Again, price points and peer pressure are doing the trick, Hill says. Customers pay a lot for their water if they consume significantly more water than does the average utility consumer, he says. “You can see yourself bench-marked in terms of consumption. That’s pretty powerful,” says Hill. “That along with the higher prices we charge for greater consumption have made a dramatic impact on con-sumer behavior.” Hill, though, says that not enough utilities are using the data they generate through AMR or AMI technology to change con-sumer behavior. The reason for this is simple: Providing real-time water-usage data to customers is far from a simple task. But Hill does think that it is inevitable that more utilities will start relying on real-time data to conserve their supply of water. “We know that all utilities will eventually adopt AMI. That means that all of them will have the means of providing customers with more data,” says Hill. “When we get to an era where water becomes sufficiently expensive to start treating water JULY/AUGUST 2012 WATER EFFICIENCY 27 PHOTOS: MASTER METER
Publication List
Using a screen reader? Click Here