More than Just a Good Read

Water utility managers today have an often unenviable task: make the most of the assets they have to offset rising operational costs, both in the short and long terms. The key is water efficiency. In addition to the obvious, the resource itself, ?water efficiency? speaks as well to wise management of infrastructure, energy, revenue and more.

Collecting meter readings is necessary ? but not sufficient ? to meet modern water utility requirements. In fact, water efficiency has become so important that many states across the country are adopting new American Water Works Association (AWWA) standards for water auditing. Non-revenue water (NRW) can only be reduced when a utility addresses losses beyond physical distribution line leaks, such as unauthorized usage and inaccurate metering. Detecting leak, tamper and reverse flow events, as well as collecting usage profile data on customer accounts, has become just as critical to a water utility as basic meter reading. As a result, automatic meter reading (AMR) and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) systems have never been more important.