City of Monroe Public Works Partners With Ferguson Waterworks To Upgrade Water Meter Infrastructure
The Public Works department in Monroe, Washington partners with Ferguson Waterworks for cost-effective AMI Solutions for utility meter upgrades in order to modernize their water metering system for accurate, more streamlined management.
Background
Monroe, Washington is thirty miles northeast of Seattle with a population of approximately 18,090. The Public Works department is responsible for managing, maintaining, and providing service for Monroe’s drinking water, garbage and recycling, sanitary sewer, stormwater, streets, and the wastewater treatment plant.
Monroe’s drive-by radio-read Sensus MXUs were installed in the early 2000s. As the years passed, technology advanced and residents began to expect more from their utility service providers. As well, the aging infrastructure resulted in measuring inaccuracies.
The City of Monroe Public Works determined that the most cost-effective way to upgrade its meter infrastructure was to install an Automated Metering Infrastructure (AMI) system where it would realize long-term savings.
“Our old meters were at the end of their useful service life, and we considered simply replacing them with new manual-read meters,” said City of Monroe Public Works Director Jakeh Roberts. “We began costing out both manual-read meters and an AMI system. Despite the fact that AMI would cost us more upfront after we spoke to our billing and customer service teams, we knew our customers would benefit most from the newer technology.”
What challenges did the City of Monroe need to address with upgraded AMI solutions for utility meters?
Aging infrastructure: Monroe’s meter system was 10-15 years old and nearing the end of its useful life, and reading accuracy was steadily declining.
Limited meter reading resources:
A full-time equivalent employee was required to read meters over five to six days. Illness and weather could affect their ability to complete reads safely and on time.
Vehicle and fuel costs:
The cost to maintain and fuel the vehicles used to read meters continued to rise.
Lost revenue:
Approximately eight percent of Monroe’s water was unaccounted for due to failed leak detection, resulting in lost revenue. In addition, the Washington State Municipal Water Law requires water suppliers to maintain their distribution system leakage at or below 10 percent of production.
The Recommendation
Ferguson Waterworks proposed Sensus Water Metering Solutions: Fixed Base FlexNet® Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), to address the City of Monroe’s needs. The Sensus FlexNet® system is a long-range radio network that serves as a dedicated and secure two-way communications highway for utilities. Using FlexNet® technology, the City of Monroe Public Works can collect and access real-time data from various smart sensors.
Automatic meter reading:
FlexNet® eliminates the need for manual meter reading, thus allowing the City of Monroe Public Works to re-allocate their employee to other services.
Meter read success:
The technology guarantees 98.5 percent meter reads.
Detection:
FlexNet® provides a programmable leak detection feature built into every SmartPoint® radio that would detect leaks previously missed by the aging meter system. It can detect and report backflow, broken pipes, zero consumption, register malfunction, and other issues.
Mode of operation:
FlexNet® takes advantage of multiple transmit modes and separate frequency channels for each type of message (inbound, outbound, alarm, etc.), which increases overall system performance, reliability, and capacity.
System capacity:
The regional network interface (RNI) has the capacity to store 24 months of standard hourly data for all meters on the network.
Frequency of reading:
The default reading interval of the FlexNet® system is one reading per hour. The MIUs transmit the hourly reading history up to six times per day. Each transmission contains up to seven days of hourly reading history.
Read on demand:
Users can directly poll MIUs over the FlexNet® two-way network for real-time reading.
Communication channels:
Sensus already held FCC-licensed spectrum primary use of all the necessary frequencies for the City of Monroe.
Minimal infrastructure:
Sensus requires fewer data collectors than any other system. “The FlexNet® system matches the functionality, reliability, flexibility, and simplicity the City of Monroe required in an AMI solution,” said Ferguson Waterworks outside sales.
What technology was used for the AMI metering system upgrade?
- An M400 FlexNet® Base Station
- iPERL® 5/8” and 1” water meters
- OMNI™ 1-½” through 8” water meters
- SmartPoint® 520M pit set modules
The Results
Monroe saw increased efficiencies with their new metering technology, saving time and money for both the customer and the city itself:
Customers
- Provides better customer service with early leak detection, saving customers the money they lose from wasted water. The technology upgrade identified dozens of continuous leaks.
- Shares data with customers and provides enhanced customer service by utilizing real-time meter reading information.
City of Monroe Public Works
- Saves staff time, vehicle travel costs, and gas expenses by eliminating the need for manual meter readings. Meter reading now requires less than two days, and the City of Monroe Public Works was able to re-allocate its meter reading employee to other service areas as all meter reading is now automatic.
- The City of Monroe’s unaccounted water went from eight percent, down to two percent, increasing supply revenue. It is also well below the 10 percent leakage standard required by Washington State.
- Eliminates all costs associated with closing customer accounts.
- The Sensus FlexNet® achieved a 99.59 percent read interval success rate – higher than the Sensus guarantee of 98.5 percent. This means that the data from almost all the meters in the city is automatically reported on time each billing cycle.
Ferguson Waterworks Support
Installation Services
The Ferguson Waterworks Meter & Automation team installed the new Advanced Metering Infrastructure system from May 2016 through December 2016. The project started with changing out the city’s residential and commercial accounts with meters in sizes from 5/8”x3/4” up to 2”. Toward the end of the project, the city added the larger accounts, 3” and up. Ferguson Waterworks’ installation team worked closely with the City of Monroe’s service technicians to remove the old, larger meters and helped locate and schedule the accounts to be upgraded.
The installation work performed by Ferguson Waterworks is under warranty for one full year, and iPERL® meters and SmartPoint® transmitters are under warranty for 20 years.
“Communication between the City of Monroe and Ferguson was fantastic and a key reason this project went so well,” said Ferguson meter installation business development manager Lynnsey Bondi. “All challenges were quickly communicated between us and the city, resulting in swift resolutions and on-time installation.”
“We teamed up with the Ferguson installation group to ensure meter connection points that weren’t up to City standard prior to the project were corrected by Public Works staff in preparation for the meter swap. This coordination made the project go much more smoothly. Having the Ferguson crew onsite made a substantial difference in the overall timeliness of the project delivery.”
Project Coordination
Ferguson Waterworks provided project coordination services for the installation process and system configuration between Sensus, Springbrook Software, and City of Monroe Public Works and finance department staff. Coordination services included integration file field mapping, testing, and providing customer instruction on properly operating and managing the system. A proprietary work order management system developed by Ferguson Waterworks automated the data transfer process by matching old and new meter numbers, documenting GIS coordinates, and taking photographs of newly installed meters so that the City of Monroe was up and running on the new system and able to bill and provide data back to customers quickly and accurately. The work order management system provided by Ferguson Waterworks ultimately saved the City of Monroe hundreds of hours of labor manually entering integration data for more than 6,000 customer accounts.
Ferguson Waterworks is also providing ongoing support by helping to troubleshoot and resolve any potential base station or transmitter issues.
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