PLANO, TX, Jan. 5, 2005 -- Datamatic Ltd. has won a multimillion-dollar contract for a complete automatic meter reading system for gas, water and electric meters at the city of Lawrenceville, Ga. The system will give Lawrenceville the ability to collect not only meter readings but also detailed usage profiles on every commercial and residential account.
"Obviously we're pleased the city of Lawrenceville selected FIREFLY for their AMR system deployment," stated Scott Durham, vice president of sales for Datamatic Energy Systems. "We worked closely with the city and in the end, it was our patented ProfilePLUS Usage Profiling capability and the availability of integrated FIREFLY modules for nearly all of their existing gas, water and electric meters that convinced Lawrenceville of the value of FIREFLY."
The city plans to install over 50,000 FIREFLY Meter Interface Units (MIUs) throughout its service territory. Installation will involve a mixture of interfacing methods to retrofit the city's existing meters and minimize meter replacement. AMR-enabled meters will be read with Datamatic ROADRUNNER handheld computers and with Datamatic's ROADRUNNER Mobile AMR Receiver.
"Lawrenceville has always tried to proactively plan for future growth and expansion," said Bill Gaguski, information systems director for the city of Lawrenceville. "After evaluating the available AMR systems, we chose FIREFLY based on its ability to connect to our existing meters in all three utilities, and the ability to collect interval data on every account."
Datamatic's FIREFLY system is compatible with virtually any meter, which means the City will not have to change meters or be limited to specific meter brands. Lawrenceville will retrofit FIREFLY MIUs to an impressive list of existing meters, including those manufactured by Badger, Sensus/Invensys, Equimeter, Neptune, American, ABB/Elster, GE, Schlumberger, Sprague, Rockwell, Landis & Gyr and more.
"The ease in which the system interacts with our current utility software and the ability to extract meter information through Datamatic's Access based software make this system a great processing tool for providing detailed information for our customer base," stated Gaguski. It will also help us resolve specific metering problems, and analyze utility usage whether it be gas, electric, or water," added Gaguski.
All FIREFLY MIU's archive consumption data at user-definable intervals using a feature called ProfilePLUSTM. As an example, each gas FIREFLY MIU can hold over 330 days of hourly consumption data while electric FIREFLY MIUs record quarter hourly data for more than 165 days.
"By implementing AMR to collect readings from all of our meters, we'll be able to maximize our resources, streamline processes and enhance customer service," added Gaguski. "The ProfilePLUS interval data is a feature that allows us to take our customer service and system management to the next level. For the first time, we'll have detailed usage information available from every meter. We can find leaks, detect theft, resolve customer billing disputes, study peak demands and a hundred other things now that we have the data."
About Datamatic Ltd.
Datamatic (www.datamatic.com), of Plano, Texas, has been a leading supplier of enterprise meter reading solutions for gas, water and electric utilities for over 25 years. The company's innovative ideas created an industry when it installed the first electronic meter reading system in 1980. For nearly a quarter of a century, Datamatic has been at the forefront in the design, implementation and support of advanced utility meter reading and field data collection solutions for water, gas and electric utilities.
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