More than 10,200 utility customers of Spanish Fork City, Utah, will join thousands of their neighbors in benefiting from the latest in advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) technology.
City officials announced that after monitoring a successful pilot of the Sensus system, it is moving to a full deployment of FlexNet. Spanish Fork’s plans call for deployment of the system with 10,000 electric meters and 16,000 water meters in the next two years. Several thousand water and electric meters are already installed and operating.
“Our long-standing trust relationship with Sensus, our analysis of AMI technology options and the successful performance of the pilot led our city council to a unanimous conclusion in favor of the Sensus FlexNet AMI system,” said Guy Chang, supervisor of electricity metering services for Spanish Fork City.
Spanish Fork is one of North America’s early adopters of automated meter reading, having partnered with Sensus for 14 years by using its TouchRead water meters throughout its service territory. The installed TouchRead system streamlined the transition to the FlexNet AMI solution.
“It has been easy to upgrade to FlexNet for Spanish Fork due to the large population of Sensus TouchRead water meters already in the system,” said Paul Taylor, water meter supervisor at Spanish Fork City. “The plug and play nature of the TouchCoupler connection allows for easy, waterproof connections, but remains modular in the event of a future meter change.” The ability to read both water and electric services over the same network was an important factor in the city’s decision to deploy FlexNet.
The FlexNet system provides Spanish Fork with two-way communications to Sensus iCon electric meters enabling automated billing, on-demand reads and remote connect/disconnect services. The system is also delivering hourly meter readings, leak detection and tamper notification for culinary and pressurized irrigation water meters throughout the city’s 13-sq-mile service area.
“The simplicity of the tower based RF solution yields low operations and maintenance costs over the life of the project and supports our requirements for rapid growth with minimal infrastructure,” Chang added. “The open systems TCP/IP information system provides immediate compatibility with our existing networking and billing operations. We are big believers in the power of the Sensus licensed-band RF solution which mitigates our future risk over the life of the project.”
Source: Sensus Metering Systems
