By Greentech Lead Team: Itron, a provider of energy and
water resource management solutions, announced its advanced metering
infrastructure (AMI) has been selected by the City of Madison, WI Water Utility
for Project H2O.
Project H2O is the City’s program to automate the
collection and analysis of water meter reads.
The solution will allow Madison to manage conservation
initiatives, improve metering accuracy and operate efficiently. The solution
will meet the City’s need for improved metering accuracy as well as leak and
tamper detection capabilities.
The utility will install more than 66,000 Itron advanced
datalogging communication modules and a fixed network collection system to
upgrade to its water metering system. Installation using services from
Wisconsin-based Corix Utilities and is expected to be complete by early 2013.
“By choosing Itron’s AMI solution for Project H2O, the
City of Madison will be able to operate more efficiently and improve customer
service using proven, reliable technology,” said Robin Piper, customer service
manager at Madison Water Utility.
Itron’s
AMI solution will enable Madison Water Utility’s customers to switch from
biannual meter reads to monthly meter reads and measure consumption in gallons
instead of cubic feet. Customers can also view their hourly water usage
information online using web presentment tools.
By using Itron’s AMI solution, the Madison Water Utility
can leverage the benefits of advanced datalogging analysis to detect water loss
and conserve water resources. The solution will also virtually eliminate the
time it takes to read all meters in the system and will move the utility from a
six-month billing cycle to a monthly billing cycle.
“Itron’s AMI solution for water will help the City of
Madison Water Utility bring their metering system to the next level by enabling
the automation of reads and other advanced metering capabilities,” said Paula
Billingham, Itron regional vice president & managing director for North
America, Water.
Recently, Itron enabled
Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) solution for use on the Nationwide
Sprint Network. This solution allows water, gas and electric utilities to wirelessly
collect metering data from Itron meters and a wide variety of other
manufacturers’ meters using Itron ERT modules (100W / 100G), over the highly
reliable and secure Sprint 3G network.