Automated water meter reading systemms

[ashtree]

Over the last 10 years the utility that i work for has been trying to operate and progress to AMR for over 12000 meters. This has been expensive and such a disaster that as the electronic meters come up for replacement we are going back to old style manually read meters.

This is not in my direct area of operations but i have had some involvement in the whole process and there were faults at many levels in the implementation and transition to AMR.

We have had problems with the meters themselves, the drive by meter reading software, and integration into billing software. The meters were so bad that we were reading most of the meters manually anyway. Our situation does not seem to be an isolated account.

Are other people generally having the same problems?


Regards
Ashtree
"Any water can be made potable if you filter it through enough money"

 

[coloeng]

ashtree,

Sorry to hear about the problems your company is having.

I started a new water system about 4 years ago and implemented an AMR system with a drive by system. So far it has worked fairly well, but on occasion it takes a few minutes on some meters before they will pick up the read even though we are right next to them, while others will read from over 1/4 mile away. Sometimes it seems to be because of different atmospheric conditions, other times who knows. We currently have less than 100 meters in a rural area, but expect around 4,000 at build out.

We have not had an issue between the meter reading software and the billing software. It seems to work really well.

Let me know if you have any specific questions.

 

[Ruby Roy]

There is lot of devices automated water reading system. You can use flow meter and other many devices which is used for water testing.

 

[bimr]

My understanding is that the drive-by AMR systems are old school. The modern systems are fixed networks and send data back through wireless networks.

The problems likely relate to poor equipment and system roll-out. Were the suppliers references checked?

The municipality here uses the Aclara Technologies software and network and Neptune meters. The meters read the flow hourly and send the water volumes back to the system twice per day. The municipality knows instantly that the meter or sending unit (MTU)is defective. The MTU's cost about $110 each

http://www.aclara.com/smart-infrastructure-solutions/water-utility-solutions/

https://www.neptunetg.com/products/water-meters/