Automatic Meter Reading for Key Customers in the South West
All large water companies have to look after the interests of their key customers. Normally these are large water users who are billed monthly, due to their consumption and for whom the consequences of estimated billing and possible leakage could be catastrophic both for the water company and the key customer.
Automating the process is key. Before talking to Ashridge Engineering, our water company customer was forced to visit each key customer site monthly to manually read the meter. Not only is this time consuming and expensive, it needs to be closely scheduled to cope with access and opening hours. In addition, given the siting of some of the customer meters and the removal of heavy drain covers as well as other health and safety considerations, this was not a job that could be reliably performed by one operative. Finally, the only comparative data available was manually produced once a month. Whilst that may provide a rough and ready monthly comparison with last month’s usage, time of use data is the only way of reliably targeting possible wastage and leakage, a key consideration bearing in mind the carbon impact of such loss of resources
It also became clear during discussion between AE & our customer that although logging pulses from meters was an acceptable surrogate for calculating the meter advance for leak detection and network analysis purposes, our customer was keen to interface directly to the register of their selected meter. This meant there was no ambiguity about the amount of water used over a given period of time for billing purposes.
In order to deal with these issues, we at AE set about designing a system to deal with the specific requirement. The basis of the design was the existing Textlog product. The objective was to add firmware routines to the Textlog which would allow it to detect the type of serial meter connected to it and to interrogate the register automatically in order to read, store and transmit AMR data for billing purposes. If this could be achieved it would make use of the existing tried and tested features of the Textlog, a waterproof rugged enclosure, IP68 design, microprocessor based device with no moving parts. Also vital was the Textlog minimum 5 year battery life, including transmitting messages via the cellular radio network.
Over the next few weeks we were supplied with a list of the serial meters in use. This list include meters manufactured by Sensus, Elster, ABB & Smart Meter. AE obtained samples of these meters with our customers help and set about the task of communicating directly with the internal registers of these meters. After a number of lab tests, field based tests took place which were successful and so a roll out programme was agreed.
As a result of the co-operation a number of joint objectives were met:
- Our customer could obtain Automatic Meter Reading without sending costly staff to site
- The end user was billed for precisely the correct amount of water consumed and so built up a reliable monthly consumption profile.
- The remotely collected data matched with the meter advance as the meter register was able to be directly read by the Textlog.
- The Textlog was also made capable of reading and transmitting other internal meter register information such as battery fail and other alarm modes, thereby giving the user early warning of possible meter failure.
- The Textlog was made a capable of auto-detecting the meter it was attached to thus saving set-up time and allowing the system to be operated by people at all skill levels.
- If required, the meter could be read and data transmitted at more frequent intervals to assist with time of use profiles and possible leakage targeting.
- The additional data collection and storage capabilities of the system allowed our customer the future option of designing value added data capture and transmission systems for the benefit of the end user.
