Published: February 16, 2008 02:42 pm      

Metered Response

City considers automatic reading of all electric, water use via network

San Marcos — A proposed city project will not only make meter readers a thing of the past, but could result in substantial savings for San Marcos residents and the city.

A consulting firm hired by the city is currently negotiating with a vendor to provide a centralized system monitoring the amount of water and electricity consumed by every individual home in San Marcos.

It's called automated meter reading, where meters are outfitted with a transmission device that sends a home's water and electricity use data through a Local Area Network, ultimately landing in the city's system for analysis.

“The impact is quite dramatic,” said Dale Pennington, managing director for UtiliWorks, the consulting firm that's working on the project. “For the first time ever, a mass balance report could tell the city every day how much water they are producing and how much they are selling and what they can do to reduce costs to the city.”

Through the Internet, residents will be able to view how much water and electricity they use every hour. Pennington said this will result in a dramatic drop off in customers who complain their electric or water bill is too high. He said when they see the data on the Internet, it will be too strong for the customer to argue against.

He said customers complaining about water or electricity issues in their home will also be reduced because any disruption will automatically appear on the network, allowing the city to know where to respond. Ideally, repair crews could fix the problems before customers call in to complain about it.

Pennington said the ability to immediately detect problems such as water main leaks as well as better manage its assets based upon the data collected in the system could save the city millions of dollars on an annual basis.

“Every city right now is struggling in America to control water losses,” he said. “Rebuilding infrastructures are expensive issues when you start to equate how much money is lost in the product you produce that's going back into the ground. It's millions of dollars. So every day we'd get through that.”

Because of cost savings like these, Pennington said the city could regain the $4.8 million spent on the project in approximately three years.

He said detecting line breakages quicker will also result in better water conservation.

“The system itself has the tool kit to tell what the consumption patterns are and if they're outside of the bounds of conservation efforts,” he said.

So if the city is under a drought condition and has to modify its water distribution, the data will tell the city how much water is being used. And if a resident is violating a city regulation by using too much water, the city can pinpoint that home.

The automated meter reading will further make it tougher on those who may tamper with a meter and those who aren't paying their water and electricity bills.

“If an alarm kicks off and says someone is tampering with an electric or water meter, it automatically sends an alarm and police could go and investigate why this alarm went off,” Pennington said. “So you'll be able to know the people who are tampering and stealing the city assets from you.”

And if someone hasn't paid their electric bills, with one push of the button the city could disconnect power from a person's home.

“It will be another factor in how you protect your revenue when people don't pay,” Pennington said.

He said one of the next objectives is for the city to communicate to its residents the automated meter reading system's benefits and how it will make their life better.

“The system is meant to support citizens in use of products you're selling to them and at the same time support the infrastructure you've paid for and make sure it's properly utilized and reduce losses that occur in these sorts of utility systems,” Pennington said.