Feb. 8, 2002 -- Irvine Ranch Water District (IRWD) is recognized throughout the U.S., as an innovator in water management practices.
The utility is an active American Water Works Association Qual Serve member and is known for leadership in water reclamation and conservation programs. IRWD is located in Southern California and serves a population of around 266,000 over a district of 133 square miles.
Safety was IRWD's primary concern. The accepted paradigm of direct reading and maintaining the deep pit water meters triggered Occupational Health and Safety (OSHA) confined space requirements on a regular basis. Financial expense of reading and maintaining the large meters over a vast service area was also questioned.
IRWD wanted to implement a pilot program that correlated to system-wide advantages. A number of Automated Meter Reading (AMR) technology requirements had to be met as follows:
- Compatible with existing meter vendors and read systems
- Non-proprietary
- Easy deployment and scalable
- Virtually maintenance-free over service life
- Product warranty
- Drive-by
RAMAR Business Partner Metron-Farnier demonstrated the FastTrackIT drive-by solution for IRWD to leverage the benefits of more accurate metering offered by the maintenance-free single-jet meters that were showing a 9.6% average annual efficiency increase. This AMR package would allow the utility to limit confined space to the highest degree possible. The reads are picked up from and advanced radio receiver and go into a database housed in a mobile laptop computer.
Below are some of the system benefits:
- Data is entered automatically versus manually, so accuracy is improved.
- Superior distance offered by the TrnasPondIT Meter Interface Unit (MIU) solved access problems.
- Industry 10-year TransPondIT Meter Interface Unit (MIU) warranty.
The hands on product training and customer service offered by Metron-Farnier and RAMAR enabled district staff to become very competent with the AMR system.
Although, final field analysis will be completed in Spring 2002, operating efficiencies are evident now. Meter reading time has been reduced around 90% for the 104 sites surveyed, due to the time saved derived from drive-by versus two staff employees opening the vault and collecting a read. Other advantages include:
-Fewer estimated reads, thereby decreasing customer complaints
-More accurate reads to more equitable billing
-Increased security form fewer vault entries
-Taxpayer savings due to lower meter-reading costs
-Increased level of customer service due to more available staff resources
-Redeployment of capital resources to infrastructure improvements and customer service.
According to Joe Kindberg, Customer Service Supervisor, "IRWD has realized a significant employees' risk reduction due to AMR."
