A wide-scale smart meter rollout is a mammoth undertaking, but how can utilities successfully set up a staged digital journey?
The transition to digital metering is a transformative journey for water utilities, offering significant benefits in efficiency, customer engagement and water conservation.
However, rolling out a digital metering program across an entire network can be daunting and complex. The experts at Taggle recommend a staged approach as a structured and scalable way to implement digital metering while ensuring clear, measurable outcomes at every step.
By breaking down the deployment into manageable stages, utilities can mitigate risks, optimise resources and continuously improve their strategies – but it’s important to define clear objectives at each step.
Seeing the future
The first stage, which is often a validation or pilot stage, has proven most successful at achieving outcomes when it is based around a district metered area (DMA). Creating a microcosm with one or two DMAs provides a clear snapshot to understand, visualise and experience what the future state looks like when you scale up.
Conversely, Taggle has found that pilots where the meters are scattered across the network, for example the top 100 water users, can provide some good savings from large leaks but do not represent a microcosm and prepare the utility for scaling in the same way that a DMA approach does.
The DMA structure is also the most efficient deployment program, as it focuses on a concentrated area for customer communications and installation. This also helps maximise the benefits by not just capturing water wastage (leaks behind the meter), but also network non-revenue water within that DMA. Data on how water usage behaves within a DMA provides insights into time of day and peak demands which can provide valuable information for pumping operations.
Taggle said it’s important that the first stage represents a complete but small portion of the full network – as this is used to assess the work needed to manage the organisational change process as digital meters are rolled out.
The DMA approach gives a snapshot of all the benefits that can then be used to validate assumptions in the business case, critical when funding a large-scale rollout.
As stage one wraps up, it is crucial to evaluate if the outcomes were achieved, if there were challenges or processes to polish prior to the next stage before planning the next stage.
Going all out
With the insights gained from stage one, utilities can refine their strategy for full-scale deployment. Expanding beyond the initial DMA requires careful planning to ensure that installation teams, customer engagement strategies and data integration processes are optimised.
Lessons learned from the pilot should inform broader staff training, process improvements and system adjustments to handle increased data volumes. By progressively increasing coverage, utilities can scale up digital metering in a way that ensures efficiency, stakeholder confidence and a maximised return on investment.
Defining clear outcomes helps ensure the success of a staged digital metering journey and prove the business case.
Utilities must set clear key performance indicators (KPIs) at each phase, such as:
- Reduction in non-revenue water losses and network leaks
- Leak management on residential and commercial lots
- Improved customer engagement and satisfaction
- Cost savings from operational efficiencies
- Billing efficiency and accuracy with system integration
- By regularly assessing progress against these metrics, utilities can make data-driven decisions and refine their approach for optimal outcomes.
This methodical approach ensures that the benefits of digital metering – enhanced efficiency, water conservation and improved customer engagement – are fully realised across the entire network.
For more information, visit taggle.com
