scholarly journals Water meter replacement and its impact on water consumption, utility revenue and payback periods

Author(s):  
M Brinkley ◽  
A A Ilemobade ◽  
M Ncube

Mechanical water meter accuracy degrades over time due to wear and tear. Based on this premise, many water utilities around the world undertake meter replacement projects. In many instances, these projects neither assess the potential or actual impacts of meter replacement on consumption and utility revenue, nor undertake meter replacement based on a best practice, customised metering policy. From 2013 to 2015, Johannesburg Water (SOC) Limited embarked on a project to replace more than 50 000 mechanical water meters that had not been read over a period of 180 days due to technical faults. This study obtained and analysed two databases of these meters and arrived at a sorted and validated database comprising 3 679 meter replacements. For each meter replacement, twelve months of water consumption data was obtained for the period prior to and after replacement. This study then investigated the impact of replacement on water consumption, utility revenue and payback periods. Some high-level highlights from the study include the following: (i) a metering policy that addresses such issues as efficient meter database management, and the optimum meter replacement age and/or volumetric reading, is critical for any water utility if it is to obtain the best results from meter replacement; (ii) in order to guarantee the highest returns on investment, bulk meters (40 mm and larger) should be prioritised for meter replacement over single-stand residential meters; (iii) the replacement of 20 mm and 25 mm meters with 15 mm meters resulted in more accurate metering of consumption by virtue of increased consumption; and (iv) payback of the 15 mm replacement mechanical meters was achieved within 12 months, with the replacement of 20 mm and 25 mm meters resulting in average monthly revenue increases per property of R266.70 and R203.08 respectively.

2022 ◽  
Vol 1212 (1) ◽  
pp. 012042
Author(s):  
A Amir ◽  
R Fauzi ◽  
Y Arifin

Abstract Clean water is one of the main sectors in smart city that need well management. One of the clean water management is utilization of water meters. The smart meter is more suitable applied for smart city. Recent Smart Water Meter allows water authorities to obtain water consumption data remotely. It also provides ability to collect and record the data in real time that can be utilised for multipurpose. However, in Indonesia, the water meters are used only to measure the total volume of clean water consumption for billing purpose only using mechanical water meter and requires labour intensive manual. Currently, many researches on smart meter design have been developed. However, the smart meter only measure and record the water consumption, without ability in which customer can determine the amount of water as needed. This paper describes design and development of smart water metering with Internet of Things. Flow meter is used as a sensor of water flowing through the pipe. The ability of the proposed smart meter is not only to measure and to record the volume water consumed, but also the customer can determine the water desired and required. The volume of water measured by the smart meter is compared with the manual measurement. The result shows that the water measured manually differs slightly from smart meter measurement using water flow sensor. The maximum difference, error, is 0.03 litres. The proposed smart meter has ability to close the main valve once the determined amount of water is reached.


2021 ◽  
Vol 108 (Supplement_7) ◽  
Author(s):  
William Bierrum ◽  
Varvara Bashkirova ◽  
Thomas Jones

Abstract Bowel obstruction is a common presentation and poses a significant challenge for clinicians. This condition is associated with a high level of mortality and morbidity. The aim of this project was to assess the clinical pathway for patients presenting with bowel obstruction and improve the overall care they received. This was achieved using guidance from the 2020 NCEPOD report looking at bowel obstruction management. Best practice guidelines from the NCEPOD report were used to assess aspects of patient care such as the time to senior review, assessment of nutrition/fluid status and risk of mortality/morbidity assessment. This identified areas where the standard of care was good, such as the majority of patients being assessed by a consultant within 14 hours. However, it also identified areas such as hydration and nutritional status assessment, documentation of ceilings of care/treatment escalation plans and calculation of risk of mortality and morbidity, which required improvement. An admission checklist and nutritional scoring sheet was created to help prompt clerking doctors when admitting patients with acute bowel obstruction. All cases of bowel obstruction were then prospectively audited over a 2 month period to assess the impact of these changes. The findings were presented at the departmental meetings to increase clinician awareness. Following the audit period, local guidelines were amended to incorporate the NCEPOD recommendations, specific pathways were also made for adhesive small bowel obstruction and malignant large bowel obstruction due to the specific requirements of these conditions. 


Author(s):  
Wiwin Windihastuty ◽  
Teddy Mantoro ◽  
Media Anugerah Ayu

Water meter reader is an essential tool for water company, which is responsible for the distribution of clean water to the public and monitor its customer's water consumption. Theoretically water meter should collect water consumption data in accurate and accountable manners. The problem is, in practice, sometimes the record is inaccurate and makes the customers feel uncertain of the water bill that they have to pay. Several factors contributed to this problem, including the officers made mistake in recording the number from water meter or sometimes the officer did not visit the customers and reporting based on the estimation of the water consumption. This chapter proposed a framework to record the water meter data by capturing images in a small mobile device. A prototype, as a proof of concept, of water meter mobile apps was developed to allow the water meter data to read and collected easily to make the billing processed in a more accurate manner but less hassle.


Water SA ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (2 April) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aluta Moahloli ◽  
Annlizé Marnewick ◽  
JHC Pretorius

Water meter under-registration results in apparent losses and lost revenue for municipalities. Municipalities should scientifically determine the optimal replacement periods for the meters in their particular municipality, as this would result in the formulation and implementation of appropriate meter replacement strategies and a reduction of apparent losses due to water meter inaccuracies. A water meter management database was analysed using the relative meter error method to determine if a relationship exists between domestic water meter age, total registered volume and accuracy, as well as the volume of apparent water losses caused by inaccuracies due to domestic water meter age and total registered volume. The net present value chain (NPVCn) method was used to determine the optimal domestic water meter replacement period. This study found no relation between water meter age and total registered volume. A relation was found between water meter age and accuracy and well as between total registered volume and accuracy. The median relative meter error was found to decrease with increasing water meter age and to increase from under-registration to over-registration as the total registered volume increased. The study also determined the volume of apparent water losses caused by domestic water meter inaccuracies due to age and total registered volume for this particular municipality to be 1.814 kL∙meter−1∙month−1, which translated to 2.81% of the municipality’s total system input volume. The optimal water meter replacement period of the municipality was determined using the NPVCn method to be at water meter ages of 9, 12 and 16 years and total registered volumes of 3 971, 5 162 and 6 750 kL at discount rates of 10%, 8% and 6%, respectively. This means that the municipality can now proactively replace its water meters so as to minimize the impact of meter inaccuracies on non-revenue water.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Halidu Abu-Bakar ◽  
Leon Williams ◽  
Stephen H. Hallett

AbstractThe COVID-19 lockdown has instigated significant changes in household behaviours across a variety of categories including water consumption, which in the south and east regions of England is at an all-time high. We analysed water consumption data from 11,528 households over 20 weeks from January 2020, revealing clusters of households with distinctive temporal patterns. We present a data-driven household water consumer segmentation characterising households’ unique consumption patterns and we demonstrate how the understanding of the impact of these patterns of behaviour on network demand during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown can improve the accuracy of demand forecasting. Our results highlight those groupings with the highest and lowest impact on water demand across the network, revealing a significant quantifiable change in water consumption patterns during the COVID-19 lockdown period. The implications of the study to urban water demand forecasting strategies are discussed, along with proposed future research directions.


2009 ◽  
Vol 60 (9) ◽  
pp. 2373-2382 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Criminisi ◽  
C. M. Fontanazza ◽  
G. Freni ◽  
G. La Loggia

Apparent losses are usually caused by water theft, billing errors, or revenue meter under-registration. While the first two causes are directly related to water utility management and may be reduced by improving company procedures, water meter inaccuracies are considered to be the most significant and hardest to quantify. Water meter errors are amplified in networks subjected to water scarcity, where users adopt private storage tanks to cope with the intermittent water supply. The aim of this paper is to analyse the role of two variables influencing the apparent losses: water meter age and the private storage tank effect on meter performance. The study was carried out in Palermo (Italy). The impact of water meter ageing was evaluated in laboratory by testing 180 revenue meters, ranging from 0 to 45 years in age. The effects of the private water tanks were determined via field monitoring of real users and a mathematical model. This study demonstrates that the impact on apparent losses from the meter starting flow rapidly increases with meter age. Private water tanks, usually fed by a float valve, overstate meter under-registration, producing additional apparent losses between 15% and 40% for the users analysed in this study.


Proceedings ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (11) ◽  
pp. 675 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chiara Luciani ◽  
Francesco Casellato ◽  
Stefano Alvisi ◽  
Marco Franchini

This paper presents some of the results achieved within the framework of the GST4Water project concerning the development of a real time monitoring and processing system for water consumption at individual user level. The system is based on the most innovative technologies proposed by the ICT sector and allows for receiving consumption data sent by a generic smart-meter installed in an user’s house and transfer them to a cloud platform. Here, the consumption data are stored and processed in order to characterize leakage at district meter area (DMA) and at individual user level. Finally, the processed data, on the one hand, are returned to the Water Utility and can be used for billing, on the other hand, they provide frequent feedback to the user thus gaining full awareness of his consumption behaviour.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (18) ◽  
pp. 5339
Author(s):  
Francisco J. Arregui ◽  
Laura Pastor-Jabaloyes ◽  
Angel V. Mercedes ◽  
Francesc J. Gavara

Accurate water consumption measurement of customers is a crucial component of water utility sustainability. During the last decade, sophisticated measuring technologies without moving components, known as solid-state water meters or static meters, have emerged. Solid-state water meters promise an improved accuracy with more processing and transmission capabilities in comparison with traditional mechanical meters. A compromise needs to be reached between energy consumption and battery life as all these new features are extremely demanding on electric energy. The usual approach adopted by the manufacturer is to reduce the frequency with which static meters take measurements of the circulating flow. This reduction in signal sampling frequency can have a significant effect on the accuracy of the instruments when measuring water consumption events of 30 s or less, these events being common in residential customers. The research presented analyses of the metrological performance of 28 commercially available solid-state water meters from six different manufacturers in the presence of intermittent flows of various durations. The results show that the magnitude and dispersion of the error under intermittent flows is significantly larger in comparison to steady state flow conditions. The ultrasonic meters examined were more influenced by the intermittency than the electromagnetic meters.


2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Ethem Karadirek

Abstract Apparent losses are mainly due to metering errors in well-managed water supply systems. There are many types of water meters based on mechanisms to measure flow passing through. Therefore, selection of water meter type is important as meter type effects measurement accuracy. In this study, a total of 50 domestic water meters were tested under varying flow rates and different water pressures. Water consumptions of end-users show temporal changes depending on the life style of consumers. Flow rates passing through the water meter and water consumption profiles affect water meter accuracy. Water consumption of a couple of end-users was monitored and consumption patterns were extracted and obtained water consumption patterns were used to determine water meter errors. The collection method was applied for determination of water meter errors. Starting flow rates, error curves and weighted error of water meters were measured in a laboratory setup. Tested volumetric-type water meters have the lowest starting flow rate and the highest accuracy whereas single-jet water meters have the lowest accuracy and the highest starting flow rate. This study aimed to provide insights on the accuracy of water meters under varying flow rates and water pressures, and advantageous information for water meter-type selection.


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (18) ◽  
pp. 2474
Author(s):  
Lucas Lepinski Golin Freitas ◽  
Andreza Kalbusch ◽  
Elisa Henning ◽  
Olga Maria Formigoni Carvalho Walter

This manuscript proposes the usage of Statistical Control Charts (SCC) to monitor water consumption in buildings. The charts were employed to study the impact of replacing toilets, providing visual and statistical feedback to measure the efficiency gain resulting from the replacement of outdated flushing equipment with newer devices. The case study was conducted in a building from a university in the South of Brazil. The building has four restrooms, from which a total of 41,554 readings were collected during a 15-month period using digital water meters. After the toilets were replaced, a reduction averaging 30.22% in water consumption was observed (from 7.51 L/flush/day to 5.24 L/flush/day). Additionally, the control charts were able to pinpoint dates when unique events happened during the water-consumption monitoring process.


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