Neptune Technology Group Inc. has signed a contract to provide technology to United Water to automate data collection from the 255,000 water meters in the company’s New Jersey and New York service areas. United Water has chosen the Neptune ARBUtility Management System™, which includes Neptune water meters with ProReadabsolute encoder registers, R900™ Radio Frequency Meter Interface Units (RF MIUs), and Neptune’s MRX920 mobile data collectors.
“Our goal is to improve meter reading efficiency as well as enhance service to our customers,” said Robert J. Iacullo, President of United Water New Jersey and United Water New York. “We believe the primary benefit of this new meter reading system for our customers is the convenience of having their meter read remotely and timeliness of accurate bills.”
Installations are scheduled to begin soon and continue through December 2008.
This is the largest water utility Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) project awarded in North America since Neptune was chosen for a similar project by the Greater Cincinnati Water Works.
“The decision by United Water is a testament to their commitment to stay in the forefront of customer service and meter reading technology,” said Chuck DiLaura, President of Neptune. “United Water was the first company in the world to deploy a commercial telephone meter reading system nearly 20 years ago for all their customers in Bergen and Hudson counties in New Jersey and Rockland County in New York.”
According to DiLaura, United Water chose Neptune’s ARB system at the time and Neptune has made every effort to ensure their systems have both backward and forward compatibility, making it possible for United Water to migrate from commercial telephone AMR to the new ARB Utility Management Mobile RF System using many of the same meters originally installed.
