Aerial view of Sunset Key |
As of July 2009, the implementation is about 60 percent complete, with 28,000 to 30,000 MIUs installed, according to Brewster. He added that meter reading efficiencies still measure above 99 percent.
"We've reorganized routes and schedules," Brewster said, "with around a 10 percent reduction in routes. We anticipate further reduction to a fraction of what they were originally."
Thanks to the hybrid approach that uses what works best where it works best, route efficiency has never been higher.
"We're reading many more routes in a single day," he said. "Now we can even read all of our Key West meters in two days, when it once took over 10 days."
Fixed Network
The move to a more advanced AMR/AMI system has led the Keys to begin using Neptune's R900 GPRS Gateway. Started with a pilot program on the island of Sunset Key, the fixed network data collector's Wide Area Network technology allows the FKAA to automatically collect, store, and manage meter readings from a targeted group of accounts – in this case, the island's 104 meters.
With a goal of 100 percent reads (anything less would still mean a trip back out to Sunset Key), the Authority and Neptune investigated locations for the data collector. In late February 2009 Brewster's crew found the "sweet spot" that yielded the 100 percent success rate.
The results of the Sunset Key study impressed Brewster. Travel time was eliminated, while the Authority not only received all of the island's meter readings but also some from across the way on Key West. The FKAA has ordered five additional GPRS Gateway units for deployment at Ocean Reef, a community with 1,200 customers on two islands just north of Key Largo. To determine the optimal placement of the collectors, Brewster has already performed a GPS topographical study of the islands and expects to begin installations in the early fall of 2009.
With implementation more than halfway complete, what is the biggest change Brewster has seen in the operations of the FKAA?
"It's helped us take a proactive approach to everything we do," he said.
With the system's ability to generate daily reads, the Authority can identify intermittent and continuous leaks as well as backflow events before they have a chance to become major problems. The FKAA Customer Service team lead by Colleen Tagle has initiated an in-house program with a designated staff that generates daily leak reports so that crews can take care of situations without a customer having to wait.
More customer data is available to the Authority, more frequently.
"We can now get 24 hours worth of readings for a full 30 days," said Brewster. "In the long term, we plan to generate time-of-use consumption, including peak periods, then post that information in graphs on a secure website that customers can access. That way, they can monitor their own water consumption."
Brewster mentioned another potential benefit of the hybrid system for down the road – literally. Citing the many areas to be read, most connected by a single highway, he said that in the event of an approaching tropical storm, the FKAA would now have ample opportunity to collect the meter readings ahead of time and download that information to the billing system.
