Itron Inc. announced that the city of North Miami Beach, Fla.’s water utility, which serves 170,000 water customers in Northern Miami-Dade County, has selected Itron to help modernize its water distribution system and recover lost water. The utility will use Itron’s advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), leak detection solution and cloud-based analytics to more effectively manage the delivery of water resources, reduce non-revenue water and conserve resources.
Itron’s water AMI solution will enable North Miami Beach to enhance customer service, protect revenue, forecast consumption, analyze flow and support district metering by leveraging detailed consumption and meter alerts collected by Itron Analytics. The utility’s customers will have access to detailed consumption information through a secure customer web portal so they can better manage their usage, conserve water and save money.
The solution will allow the utility to collect meter reads remotely, increasing operational efficiency, enhancing worker safety and improving billing accuracy. In addition, using Itron’s leak detection solution, North Miami Beach can monitor distribution lines for leaks, helping reduce non-revenue water, associated costs and potential service disruptions caused by major leak events.
“North Miami Beach looks forward to offering new services and capabilities to our customers with Itron’s advanced metering solution. Our goal is to drive down costs for the utility and our customers and reduce the amount of water we produce,” said Ana M. Garcia, city manager for North Miami Beach. “We chose Itron for this project because of the company’s commitment to quality and extensive experience helping utilities with automated and advanced metering deployments.”
“Itron’s water solution is perfectly suited to meet the city of North Miami Beach’s needs for improved efficiency, reduced non-revenue water and enhanced customer service,” said Paula Billingham, vice president of sales, marketing and delivery for Water North America at Itron. “As water infrastructure ages and demand for water increases, the need for technology to help better manage resources becomes increasingly important. Utilities like North Miami Beach are leading the way to a more resourceful world.”
The Itron solution being deployed at North Miami Beach consists of water communication modules and acoustic leak sensors as well as cloud-based leak monitoring, network and Itron Analytics software applications. Installation of the solution will be complete in summer 2015.
Source: Itron Inc.
