Satu Mare, Romania
Challenge: A water network riddled with problems, one of which was a discrepancy between sub-meters and the main meters in a house or apartment building. This was commonly seen when using mechanical meters, resulting in 20-25% difference in readings from the sub-meters and the main meters. This left the city with the challenge of having to either bill the customer individually or not at all. Additionally Satu Mare suffered meter fraud with consumers turning the meter the wrong way to create a reverse flow. Overall, the city’s levels of sustainability.
Solution: The city decided to install 30000 iPERL™ meters in 7040 homes and 22960 in apartment buildings.
Benefit: The iPERL™ smart meter put an end to inaccurate readings, lack of data and fraud since the meters come fitted with alarms to alert the utility of tampering. The readings were so efficient that the water utility was able to reduce meter read-out times of 2500 devices. With the high-performance meters, they were able to detect an increase in consumption, with peaks over time which lead the utility to investigate and discover a consumer leak. The customer was pleased with the results that the data from the smart meters provided, as well as the benefits that having a meter reading at a distance provided the employees with. Now the utility can look forward to increasing operational efficiency, accurate data and conserving water.