Addressing Your Meter Needs

Welcome to our second annual Meter Source supplement. As I told those of you who were expecting the Meter Source earlier this year, WWD decided to move the Meter Source from our February issue to the August issue in order to benefit the editorial program we feature during this time of year.

We also wanted to ensure maximum editorial exposure to a growing segment of the meter marketplace by distributing the Meter Source from our booth (#416) at Autovation 2006, the annual international symposium of the Automatic Meter Reading Association.Autovation 2006 is scheduled for Oct. 22 to 25, 2006 in Nashville,Tenn. You can find more information on Autovation 2006 by visiting the AMRA website (amra-intl.org).

Despite the trend toward automatic meter reading (AMR), approximately 75% of all water meters in the U.S. are still being read manually, according to a recent Scott Report, a series of statistical analyses of the AMR industry.

Howard A. Scott, publisher of the Scott Report, revealed that currently only 19 million water meters are automatic while, in comparison, 23 million gas meters and 44 million electric meters are automatic.

According to Scott’s analyses, only 13,500 of the 58,000 total community water utilities listed by the U.S. EPA have more than 500 customers, impacting the total number of AMR water applications.However, the number of AMR projects in the U.S. overall appears to be rising, as 4,000 additional water-related AMR projects are currently underway. In the long-term, Scott predicts the total number of automatic water meters will surpass the number in the gas industry sometime over the next four years. Accordingly, within the past year, 3.7 million automatic water meters were installed in comparison to 2.8 million gas meters.

In anticipation of this influx of meter installations, the Meter Source contains editorial content in the form of white papers and case studies addressing current issues relevant to AMR water applications as well as flowmeter-related applications.

Subject matters in the Meter Source include meter data management, meter leak detection and AMR’s relationship with RF, as well as detailed case studies and new meter related products and services.