Water Advanced Metering Infrastructure: Lifeblood for Water Utilities Water and energy providers face parallel issues with regard to resource management, consumer consumption behaviors, operational efficiencies, distribution reliability and access to timely and detailed information. Both industries are turning to advanced metering infrastructure, or AMI, as an answer to these challenges. click here for more information Two-Way Communications Enhance Itron Water Fixed Network The Itron Water Fixed Network has evolved from an efficient meter reading system to an advanced metering solution and conservation tool. Our work to improve our solutions for you doesn't stop there. click here for more information Stark Reminders of the Need for Effective Conservation Tools, From Georgia to the Desert Southwest Recent water supply challenges in Georgia and the southwestern United States necessitate new tools and strategies for effective water conservation in the 21st century. click here for more information Closing the Drain on Costly System Leaks Itron offers a low-cost and flexible solution, ZCorr, to help water providers detect and pinpoint costly distribution system leaks. click here for more information A Sneak Peak at Water SaveSource™ To reflect the new capabilities of Itron Water Fixed Network, we are re-branding the solution and we want you to have the first look. click here for more information

Advanced Metering Infrastructure: Lifeblood for Water Utilities
		In an ideal world, how much energy or water we use would not be a concern for those who provide those resources—utilities would simply regenerate or replenish it and customers would not be asked to conserve or change their usage patterns. Water and energy resources are not endless. Our growing society puts strain on the environment, requiring energy and water providers to optimize every kilowatt and every drop of
water. They are tasked with sustaining the resource —while water providers seek long term control over a storable commodity, energy providers seek immediate control of a fleeting commodity. Water and energy providers face parallel issues with regard to resource management, consumer consumption behaviors, operational efficiencies, distribution reliability and access to timely and detailed information. Both industries are turning to advanced metering infrastructure, or AMI, as an answer to these challenges. Advanced metering is a metering system that records customer consumption hourly or more frequently and that provides for daily or more frequent transmittal of measurements over a communication network to a central collection point. --Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, October 2006 The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's definition of AMI focuses on the collection of interval data. Given its role in demand response, interval data is the cornerstone of AMI for energy providers. The electricity marketplace further expands AMI's scope to include tamper detection, outage detection, premise device/load control, pricing event notification and more. Energy utilities realize that the communication network necessary to provide interval data collection can be leveraged to provide utilities with an unprecedented amount of functionality. This leads to increased operational efficiencies, demand management, improved customer service, distribution reliability and greater revenue assurance. The increase in capabilities creates an attractive business case that justifies the higher costs of AMI systems. Subsequently, the number of electric utilities interested in AMI has increased beyond early expectations. While the water industry has been slower to embrace advanced metering technologies, the challenge of managing growing water demand against shrinking supplies, combined with higher operating costs and reduced staff, forces many water providers to consider information systems that better enable them to monitor and manage the delivery and usage of water. While a simple consumption read is vital for billing purposes, more frequent interval data from an advanced network is becoming just as important to address evolving operational and resource management challenges, and to satisfy the customer's expectations of the utility in identifying their patterns of water use. Water utilities appear to have adopted the term AMI from the energy market to describe these advanced metering infrastructure systems. The business drivers for electricity and gas are well known, but what are the business drivers for advanced metering functionality in water? Beyond traditional automated meter reading (AMR) drivers such as meter reading cost reductions, safety concerns and customer service-level improvements with accurate bills and on-demand reads, water providers are now looking for systems to help them manage their growing challenges. Demand is growing for systems that help reduce non-revenue water losses and associated delivery costs, stem hidden water losses, support water conservation programs, manage peak loads, improve the integrity of delivery systems, and help plan for future growth. Curtailing water consumption during peak energy or drought-induced restricted use periods is also a driver as water providers strive to lower demand and resulting costs for energy and water. Providers are also realizing that advanced systems can offer information they need, when they need it, allowing them to better monitor and manage the delivery and usage of their primary asset—water. Advanced Metering for Water Advanced metering infrastructure for water providers refers to fixed network and meter data management solutions that deliver advanced data collection, information management and innovative functionality. Like its energy counterpart, water AMI systems collect and present detailed usage data to customers, empowering them to make informed usage decisions. AMI enables time-synchronized rate structures that can incentivize consumers to modify consumption behavior. The interval data also facilitates conservation program compliance allowing a utility to identify water abusers and to further determine the competency of its initiatives. AMI endpoints and intelligent meters proactively identify the meter-measured "leaks" to avoid high-bill complaints and conserve water as well as backflow and tampering events that assist the utility in managing its network. An AMI network can offer effective resource and distribution system reliability management by continuously monitoring and locating unmetered leaks. In the near future AMI will likely allow remote shut-off and enable real-time water quality monitoring and pressure management feedback. As in the energy industry, the potential of AMI for water is only limited by the innovation of additional applications and systems. A water AMI system consists of up to five main components: A smart meter can not only report the meter reading but offer information concerning continuous flow, high flow and reverse flow. The information, when provided in condensed form, places a smaller workload on the endpoint forwarding the data. A smart endpoint collects and stores water interval data, event alarms, and other usage data, plus interfaces with, collects, stores and transmits data from other devices. Two-way communication from the utility to the endpoint enables true on-demand consumption and interval data reads, remote synchronization, and allows for future functionalities. A data collection network provides for the communication of various data sets—meter data, monitoring data and others—between the endpoint and the utility at specified intervals or on-demand. The collection network can be publicly or privately-owned and requires redundancy properties to ensure secure and reliable data transmission back to the utility. Two-way communication and IP-based networks increase capabilities. Application software manages the flow of communications and data running over the network and between the utility and endpoints. It not only retrieves data stored in each endpoint, but consistently reports ALL interval and consumption data up through the network and stores it in a long term database. It must also perform system diagnostics to ensure network health and reliability. Meter data management software provides a single, scaleable repository for metering-based data and allows analysis of the collected interval data for usage profiling, behind-the-meter leak detection and other advanced functions. It offers standard interfaces to other utility systems such as distribution monitoring, CIS, GIS and workforce management. Sophisticated systems to analyze metered use not only lead to correctly sizing the meter but help determine the time for meter replacement. Optimizing every drop of water makes sense on a number of levels—the drain on our most precious natural resource is certainly a priority. It is unrealistic to think that using water more efficiently would suddenly create an unlimited supply. What the advanced technology offered by AMI for water networks does allow is providers to look to the future and see responsible stewards making wise choices about water use.

Two-Way Communications Enhance Itron Water Fixed Network
		The Itron Water Fixed Network (WFN) has evolved from an efficient meter reading system to an advanced metering solution and conservation tool. Increased functionality and advanced software capabilities offer water providers acoustic leak detection, and trending and comparative analysis. Our work to improve our solutions for you doesn't stop there. Itron is now pleased to announce the addition of two-way
communication functionality to WFN. Our two-way communications extend from the system software all the way down to the endpoint. With two-way communications to the meter, utilities can now perform on-request reads that help settle customer bill disputes. Customer service representatives can request the most recent meter read while the customer is on the phone for accurate and timely information relative to the disputed bill. Two-way communications allow interval meter data to be requested to fill gaps in information that may not have made it to the collection engine database. It also enables utilities to request network configuration information and re-program endpoints, such as setting the intervals for meter data collection. Two-way functionality includes GPS time-synchronization of all endpoint clocks, which ensures accurate time-stamping of interval consumption reads. Two-way communications also opens the door for advanced capabilities yet to be considered. This potential offers added-value and promise to future demands from utilities. Those interested in learning more can email knowledge@itron.com.

Stark Reminders of the Need for Effective Conservation Tools, From Georgia to the Desert Southwest
		Up here in Spokane, Wash., where Itron's corporate headquarters is located, we recently had one of the snowiest winters in recent memory. Heavy snowfall has meant brisk snowblower sales and difficult driving conditions. Yet it also brought a healthy mountain snowpack to provide insurance against drought conditions this summer, while buoying the spirits of Bonneville Power Administration and other utilities throughout the Northwest who own and operate hydropower assets.
Yet despite regional variation in conditions, overall water supply challenges remain stark. In Georgia, water levels in Lake Lanier, the reservoir that provides Atlanta's water supply, remain dangerously low and close to the record-low levels set last December. In fact, the situation is so acute that Georgia legislators have dusted off an age-old border dispute with Tennessee in what appears to be a half-serious attempt to wrest a short section of the Tennessee River away from its neighbor to the north to secure more water supply for the state's growing needs. Back in 1818, a surveyor named James Camak established the border between Georgia and Tennessee, supposedly on the 35th parallel. However, thanks to a malfunctioning sextant and bad charts, doubts arose soon after about the quality of his work. And it turns out he actually drew the line a mile south of the 35th parallel. Had he been accurate, a short stretch of the Tennessee River at Chattanooga would flow through Georgia, giving the state access to that water supply. In reality, Georgia would stand little if any chance of prevailing in this matter given how long the border has stood where it is. However, this dust-up demonstrates just how serious the water supply issue is in the region. Political sophistry aside, Atlanta and the Southeast face continuing water supply and conservation challenges. Not the least of which is the fact that two months of near-normal rainfall have obscured memories of how acute last fall's drought was, when the 3 million residents of the metro Atlanta area were down to 80 days of stored water supply. Nevertheless, Lake Lanier remains 13 feet below normal levels. Atlanta and the surrounding southeastern United States will need to undertake significant social change in the years to come regarding how people and businesses perceive and use water resources. Two thousand miles away in the desert Southwest, the geology of the bedrock walls surrounding Lake Mead, the primary water supply to growing urban centers such as Las Vegas as well as Southern California, is more visible than ever. Its water levels have continually receded since 2000. In fact, the reservoir currently stands at 52 percent of capacity, by far a historic low, and scientists are seriously concerned about the viability of the reservoir to meet long-term water supply needs in the region. In fact, according to a pair of researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, there is a 50 percent chance Lake Mead, the key source of water for millions of people in the southwestern United States, will be effectively dry by 2021 if climate changes as expected and future water usage is not curtailed. Without Lake Mead and neighboring Lake Powell, the Colorado River system has no buffer to sustain the population of the Southwest through an unusually dry year, or worse, a sustained drought. In such an event, water deliveries would become highly unstable and variable, said research marine physicist Tim Barnett and climate scientist David Pierce. Barnett and Pierce concluded that human demand, natural forces like evaporation, and human-induced climate change are creating a net deficit of nearly 1 million acre-feet of water per year from the Colorado River system that includes Lake Mead and Lake Powell. This amount of water can supply roughly 8 million people. Their analysis of Federal Bureau of Reclamation records of past water demand and calculations of scheduled water allocations and climate conditions indicate that the system could run dry even if mitigation measures now being proposed are implemented. Their conclusions are included in an upcoming paper, "When will Lake Mead go dry?", which has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed journal Water Resources Research, published by the American Geophysical Union. "We were stunned at the magnitude of the problem and how fast it was coming at us," said Barnett. "Make no mistake, this water problem is not a scientific abstraction, but rather one that will impact each and every one of us that live in the Southwest." "It's likely to mean real changes to how we live and do business in this region," Pierce added. The Lake Mead/Lake Powell system includes a stretch of the Colorado River in northern Arizona. Aqueducts carry this water to Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego and other communities in the Southwest. Currently the system is only at half capacity because of a recent string of dry years, and the team estimates that the system has already entered an era of deficit. "When expected changes due to global warming are included as well, currently scheduled depletions are simply not sustainable," wrote Barnett and Pierce in the paper. Barnett and Pierce note that a number of other studies in recent years have estimated that climate change will lead to reductions in runoff to the Colorado River system. Those analyses consistently forecast reductions of between 10 and 30 percent over the next 30 to 50 years, which could affect the water supply of between 12 and 36 million people. The researchers estimated there is a 10 percent chance that Lake Mead could be dry by 2014. They further predict that there is a 50 percent chance that reservoir levels will drop too low to allow hydroelectric power generation by 2017. New tools and strategies for effective water conservation will be an enduring necessity in the 21st century. We've all been to management seminars that teach us the axiom that we can't manage what we can't measure. Nothing could be more relevant than applying this logic to our water supplies. By introducing more frequent, highly accurate measurement of water consumption through advanced metering systems, coupled with new analytic capabilities such as leak detection, both under the street and behind the meter, we establish the foundational technology for enabling and supporting many other forms of conservation. These range from reduction of lost water, to time-based pricing to conservation program compliance monitoring. A sustainable future will demand nothing less.

Closing the Drain on Costly System Leaks
		Distribution system leaks are costly. Not only is there revenue lost on the leaking water, but associated costs to pump and treat the lost water. There is the liability of the leak becoming a major event and potential property damage. There's also the lost water itself, which can be a major concern in areas with supply issues. Itron offers a low-cost and flexible solution to help water providers detect and pinpoint costly distribution system leaks. ZCorr is a
network of digital correlating loggers (DCLs) which pinpoint the exact locations of any leaks in one overnight surveillance. The easy-to-use ZCorr software revolutionizes the ease and accuracy of pipeline leak detection and pinpointing. ZCorr is flexibly designed for a variety of deployment strategies depending on your structured leak detection program: One night - one zone Multiple nights - one zone Multiple nights - multiple zones Deployment is planned by you, either in the office or in the field, working from your distribution system maps. Using ZCorr, water providers can strategically target a section of distribution system pipe and pinpoint the exact locations of any leaks within the defined coverage area in a single night. ZCorr enables leak detection managers to plan the placement of the ZCorr DCLs and analyze and review the overnight recording results—all from the comfort and convenience of the office. Water providers first identify one or more sections of pipeline for investigation. The DCLs are configured for the investigation, including the synchronization of the real-time clocks in each DCL and placement of each DCL on a digitized map of the distribution system. The DCLs are typically deployed in the field 400 to 4,000 feet apart, usually on valves or hydrants Once deployed, the DCLs intelligently record high-resolution sound data, short-term or overnight, saving vibration samples at intervals. Nighttime data recorded by the DCLs is downloaded to a PC, stored permanently and automatically analyzed to pinpoint the locations of any significant leaks. Data processing uses special encoding techniques to account for the unique environmental conditions of each logger. For example, different pipe materials, large-diameter pipes, and distances between loggers, are all situations where the encoding techniques are set to enhance the leak acoustic signature. Analysis Auto Analysis: ZCorr automatically correlates data among all DCLs, pinpointing the map locations of any leak sounds present. Click on any pair of DCLs to see the leak noise correlation. Listen: ZCorr lets you listen to actual nighttime recorded leak sounds. Click on any logger symbol or leak index bar to hear the leak sound at that map location. Correlation Results: Click on any thumbnail image to get a detailed analysis, pinpoint multiple leaks, enter pipe information, or see logger and leak locations on map. ZCorr utilizes a sophisticated noise correlation analysis called Automatic Leak Frequency Analysis (ALFA™), to provide the most accurate leak pinpointing in the industry. ALFA works by identifying the acoustic signature of the leak sound at each logger location. The ALFA filter concentrates on the leak sounds and discards other vibrations, for example those due to normal flow, transient usage and environmental sounds such as traffic. ZCorr software finds all significant leak noise correlations automatically when the logger is replaced in its docking station. The results are ranked into a leak index based on leakage versus usage, correlation signal quality and the smallest estimated error in pinpointed location of any leak(s). Once the analysis is completed a summary displays a zone map with all DCLs and exact locations of pinpointed leak noises along with a table of all significant correlations. With a ZCorr system, water providers can: Perform routine pipeline integrity management to reduce water loss in the distribution system. Optimize system maintenance with proactive detection and pinpointing of pipeline leaks. Improve water conservation. Reduce non-revenue water losses. ZCorr offers water providers a low cost advanced digital leak detection solution to mitigate costly system leaks.

A Sneak Peak at Water SaveSource™
		As the Itron Water Fixed Network continues to add advanced functionality, we realize that its capabilities have grown beyond its original scope. To reflect its new possibilities and the changing marketplace, we are re-branding the solution for better market positioning. Water SaveSource™ is the new brand for Itron Water Fixed Network and it's starting to appear in publications and at trade shows.
Look for a detailed announcement from Itron on Water SaveSource™—advanced metering and monitoring technology for the challenges water utilities face.