DUBLIN, Ireland, June 17, 2009 -- Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "World Water Meter Report & Database Ed 7 - 2009" report to their offering.
This new edition of the Water Meter Report expands the coverage of the marketing profiles to review 51 countries in detail, an expansion from 22 countries in previous reports. The market is now broken down in value and volume by user segment, C&I and residential. The report also contains a table of population, numbers of households and the installed base of utility water meters in all countries.
A valuable addition to the report is the inclusion of sub-meters, which the report has not covered before.
The report includes a discussion of the market drivers. Types of water meter and country practices for type approval are outlined. The water utility sector is outlined. Advanced metering is discussed, with reference to the overlap of AMR and AMI.
The water meter sector is beginning to change, following in the path of the advanced metering revolution taking place in the energy sector, but at some distance behind it. In the US water utilities started to deploy AMR several years ago but it has not reached parity with the energy utilities. The emphasis is now changing for both sectors, to AMI. In a time of rising water prices there is a need to control costs but another important consideration enters the equation for water, scarcity of the resource. In recent years there have been a number of critical droughts in countries scattered over the globe. In some countries which rely on hydropower this has lead to a shortage of electricity, as was the case in Brazil several years ago. In other countries it has affected both industry and the population. In Taiwan in 2008 water was rationed to industry in order to provide drinking water for the population. In China scarcity of water is a national priority at the highest level. In the Middle East, Spain, the southern states of America water scarcity is a recurrent problem. Smart water meters are being deployed to manage the resource and this is a growth area. Irrigation meters are also increasingly prominent.
Another issue which the ABS reports addresses for the first time is the penetration and increasing usage of sub-metering. Property owners have always charged their tenants for water, but mostly they include it in the rent or allocate costs by RUBs (ratio utility billing), apportioning the charge according to floor area, numbers of occupants or some such variable. Sub-meters encourage tenants to use less water and they guarantee fair charges. Sub-meters have been around for some years but their usage is growing and more growth is predicted. Sub-meters are used not only to measure total consumption but to monitor individual usage points, such as taps and boilers
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