Water Utilities Face a Choice in Getting to Smart Water: Go it Alone, or Procure Results
The Smart Grid for Water is Shifting Risk and Accelerating Modernization for Municipal Water Utilities
Watch this on-demand webinar to learn how an innovative community of water utilities is getting to a smart infrastructure fast by subscribing to a service and procuring results – shifting risk and getting more for less.
Water is by far the most capital-intensive utility, and delivering water is an expensive service that requires a significant infrastructure investment. Across the US, more than 50,000 disparate municipal water utilities are struggling to maintain and upgrade their infrastructure, while delivering affordable water.
Cities are increasingly prioritizing the improvement of the meter-to-cash segment of the delivery system because it provides the largest and fastest payback, often returning significant additional capital to fund other projects and improvements.
Webinar Speaker
Jason Bethke
President, FATHOM
So, what does it take to modernize the meter-to-cash infrastructure?
- Hardware – Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) provides the automated, two-way communication between a smart water meter and the utility company.
- Software – Multiple software applications are required to make sense of the meter data, bill water consumers, manage work orders for provisioning service, and provide information to consumers. Plus, all the IT infrastructure and security required to run those applications.
- Services – Multiple skillsets for integrating the above, running and maintaining the applications, as well as providing customer service for billing and service provisioning.
- Optimization Expertise – The ability to interpret the intelligence provided by the smart infrastructure to discover water losses, improve billing accuracy and completeness, and prioritize future modernization efforts.
The reality is that most municipal water utilities simply do not have the resources and skillsets to put these components together, nor the funds to buy all the pieces required. Many have tried this approach and failed.
Enter The Smart Grid for Water. This pre-built meter-to-cash infrastructure not only provides economies of scale by aggregating services for a unified community of utilities across the country, but offers a huge shift in risk for municipal governments. Cities are no longer required to buy the components and build their infrastructure on their own.
The transformative result is that cities can now snap in to a service and procure results, rather than buying products. Leaders can now identify their desired outcomes, and procure the necessary services to achieve them:
- % of total water billed
- % of bills accurate and on time
- Hourly data for consumers on a mobile website
- Alerts for consumers when they have a potential leak
This translates to a huge shift in risk for municipalities, and significant advances in efficiency and service levels. Now cities can subscribe to predictable cost, predictable outcomes, and predictable revenue – and get to the benefits fast.
