AMR System 1

[TohoB2]

I am new to the forum and somewhat new to water distribution. My background is in Construction Project Management and Estimating.

I was recently hired to coordinate an AMR Program for the local Utility.

Have any members had experience with creating an AMR Program and what successes and pitfalls did they encounter

Bill

 

[bimr]

I guess the biggest pitfall is that these AMR programs are sold on the basis that they will be self funding.

You are supposed to sell enough additional water to fund the installation of the AMR program.

Unfortunately, that usually does not happen. People end of using less water which results in less revenue.

 

[Unotec]

May I ask what AMR stands for?

<<A good friend will bail you out of jail, but a true friend
will be sitting beside you saying ” Damn that was fun!” - Unknown>>

 

[coloeng]

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that AMR stands for Automatic Meter Reading.

There are different levels of AMR that you can pursue. We currently use a combination of touchpads and radio reads. The touchpads are used on probably 95% of our meters with radio reads mainly being used on meters where it is either unsafe for a meter reader to stop, i.e. busy street, or in areas like shopping malls.

The payoff in AMR is not from selling more water, but by being able to reduce the amount of labor required to do the meter reading. We were able to justify touchpads for our system, but the cost of radio reads has not come down enough for us to justify 100% switch to that system.

We have about 33,000 meters over a 240 sq. mi. area, with 70% of our meters in an urban area.

 

[TohoB2]

We are using MTU's located at each home/business meter which will send a reading to a collector unit (pole mounted) which sends the data back to the host computer.

 

[Keith1976]

I was looking for better residnetial flowmeter when I notices this thread.

@TohoB2,
I am also proposing District Metering Area (DMA) to my customer in Indonesia where the water loss in distribution pipeline can be as high as 50%, no kidding. So I can install a bulk meter like MAG8000 from Siemens within a district main pipe and put a datalogger(flow, totalizer and pressure). The logger will send data via SMS to head office.

Initial suspect is the residential meter. It has very poor accuracy. All are using rotary and positive displacement sensor. People also tend to open the tap inside their house with waterdrop so the meter will not rotate. From my very personal opinion, this kind of wheel will suffer from dirt, mud, soil, etc that will cause wrong reading.

Can I have your experience in this? What is the accuracy of residential/individual meter that you face?

Thanks and regards,
Keith

 

[TohoB2]

Keith1976,

We will be using pre-potted Neptune meters which have proven very reliablehere in Florida, Sensus is also a good meter for resedential use.

The data collection has been very accurate using these resedential meters also

Bill

 

[Keith1976]

Thanks TohoB2