Water Billing World

The recycling of water has come to prominence again this week with two recent stories. The first is from the Draft Report on Urban Water from the Productivity Commission of Australian. They state that despite public resistance, the use of recycled water is one of the more effective forms of water conservation in that country. The second is an op-ed piece by Lori Anne Dolqueist in the Environmental Leader entitled “The Delicate Art of Promoting Recycled Water”. Both are worth reading. Recycled water is typically delivered by a special, purple-coloured pipe and is billed as a separte item on the householder’s water bill.

Two countries in the Indian Ocean region have recently announced water management initiatives.  In Australia the Murray Darling Basin Authority has published a discussion paper on water flows in the Murray Darling Rivers system, proposing to reduce permanently the amount of water irrigators can draw from the rivers.  Limits have already been in place for many years because of the persistent drought, with an overall drop in economic activity of only 1%.  However the farmers and local communities have declared the end of life as they know it, economic ruin and all the other shibboleths so beloved of vested interests.

India  is formulating a revised National Water Policy in consultation with the States and other stakeholders to ensure basin-level management strategies. This would deal with variability in rainfall and river flows due to climate change.
The Government is also looking at amendment to the Inter-State Water Disputes Act and the River Boards Act for time-bound clarificatory/supplementary orders of tribunals on inter-State water disputes and for setting up an Inter-State River Basin Authority for overall coordination of watershed agencies under inter-State basins.  The revised policy will take on board crucial issues such as water demand management, equitable distribution, water pricing, stringent regulatory mechanism and allocating priority to water for life-support and ecology over industry. Needless to say, the industry is opposing the last priority it might be allocated.  There is a push to make water budgeting and water auditing mandatory. There is a suggestion to introduce tradable water entitlements for farmers but there is no agreement on it.

Some Australian utilities report success using a waste tracking system that monitors hazardous discharges.  However monitoring hazardous waste and billing it correctly are two different things.  Commonly utility billing software is designed for sale to both electricity and water utilities, and the complexities of billing for trade waste are usually ignored by vendors/developers.  The most recent example of a well-designed trade waste billing and permits application is Infor’s Hansen-8 but there’s not much else available. 

Sydney Water will use a locally-developed, computer-based system designed by Wastelink to monitor and control each stage of its liquid trade waste management, across a perimeter of 12,700 square kilometres of Sydney.   Integrated with Sydney Water’s existing procedures, the Wastelink system currently only tracks grease trap waste in the Sydney region but it will be progressing to support other liquid trade waste including oily water in the near future.

According to Sydney Water, Wastelink is a more powerful and advanced development than its predecessor, the WasteSafe system, also developed by Wastelink in 1992.  Sydney Water’s manager of customer sustainability, Andrew Kirkwood, said Sydney Water’s old system was unable to keep up with the utility’s growing demands on water management.  “We needed a system providing much greater control of the whole collection to disposal process so we can minimise the impact on sewerage facilities,” Kirkwood told PACE.

Wastelink general manager, Sue Hood, said the Wastelink software allows water utilities to have visibility over the discharged liquid trade waste.  “The success of a trade waste management program involves installing a system to identify, permit and audit the discharge from trade waste dischargers and understand how these dischargers relate to the total sewerage system,” she said.  Already being used by Gold Coast Water, Toowoomba Council and Dubbo Council, the Wastelink software begins recording data as soon as liquid trade waste is collected by the waste contractor right up until it is transferred to a liquid trade waste depot. 

Hood explained the waste goes through a pre-treatment device such as a grease trap of a restaurant or an oily water separator at a mechanical workshop before it is discharged to sewer. A waste contractor then uses the Wastelink software to record information about the discharged waste.  She said Wastelink can also be used to record information about the discharges.  “The Wastelink system also helps the utility manage the discharger’s details and the frequency of when the pre-treatment device needs to be pumped out by a licenced waste contractor,” Hood said.

Sydney Water’s Kirkwood pointed out that the data obtained by waste contractors is recorded and uploaded onto a central system via hand-held scanners.  “This gives Sydney Water the comprehensive, current and accurate data to monitor and plan liquid waste operations more cost-effectively and reliably than ever before – and so it fulfils our overall mission to protect public health and the environment,” he said.

Wastelink’s Hood added that in order to obtain the data about the discharged liquid when it is discharged , the system can be ‘hooked up’ to a weighbridge, load cell or flowmeter at the liquid waste depot.  “It ensures that the waste contractor is taking the waste to a licensed processing plant or depot by tracking and reporting on the litres discharged,” she said.  According to Sydney Water’s Kirkwood, Sydney Water has confidence in Wastelink to help keep ahead of the industry’s evolving requirements.  “With their deep insight into our needs, Wastelink worked hard to forge an excellent consultative relationship with Sydney Water,” he said.  “There is a mutual respect and understanding that makes this a very productive working partnership.”

The NY Times reports that smart water meters are taking off in California, according to a forthcoming report from the California Energy Commission. More than half of the state’s water utilities have some smart meters in their service areas, according to the report, “Smart Meters and California Water Agencies: Overview and Status.”  Lon W. House, the report’s author, said in an interview that the number was likely to be “significantly” higher now because the report’s data was now over a year old.  “The water agencies in California are really under the gun to find new and innovative ways to conserve water,” Mr. House said.

California cities are supposed to slash water use by 20 percent by 2020, under a law passed last year.  Nationwide, 28 percent of water systems have some smart metering installed, according to the report — a number that seems to bear out a recent study by Oracle that emphasized the reluctance of many water utilities to add smart meters.

Smart water meters can record water use data hourly or even more frequently, in contrast to a conventional meter, which is inevitably read only every few months.  Even after a smart system is installed, a utility worker may still need to drive to the house to read the meter. But he or she should not have to get out of his car, because the signal can be collected electronically. That saves time and money.  According to the report, each manual meter read costs from 50 cents to $1.50. But if a good signal-transmission system is installed along with new meters, the utility can receive the data directly and does not even need to send meter readers out.

By providing a constant stream of information, smart meters should make it easier to detect leaks. If your system is using water at 3 a.m., for example, and there’s no sprinkler on, something is probably wrong. Mr. House said that smart meters could quickly cut down water usage by 5 to 15 percent.  Smart water meters are close cousins of smart electric meters, another emerging technology. They are often even made by the same companies.

Still, some cities in perpetually water-strapped California are only just getting around to putting in home water meters in the first place. These include Sacramento — where according to a recent newspaper report, only a quarter of residents have meters — as well as Fresno.

Unlike electricity, which is generated, and that costs money, water is storted and its marginal cost is negligible.  Water consumption prices are intended to indicate scarcity and to act as signals for behaviour modification.  So it’s no surprise that as water consumption decreases, water prices also increase, as it’s the same fixed charges the water utilities must recover through their water billing software.  In Tampa, FL they’re now remarking on this behaviour:

Utilities are selling less water, which means revenues are falling. When that happens, utilities say, they have to raise rates to meet fixed expenses such as debt for construction, utilities and operational costs.  "It’s a difficult message – saying, ‘Thank you for conserving, but now we have to charge you more,’" said Michelle Van Dyke, spokeswoman for Hillsborough Water Services, which provides water to about 500,000 people.

The region’s wholesale water supplier expects to boost what it charges public utilities in the Tampa Bay area, though it’s still studying how much the increase will be.  Customers of Hillsborough County’s water system already saw an increase of nearly 2 percent in their November bills and might see further increases each year.  Those residents also were hit with another increase amounting to an additional $1.08 a month for the average household to reflect an increase the wholesale price the county pays for water.

Conservation isn’t solely to blame. The floundering economy and stumbling housing market also affected water consumption.  Utilities say it’s tough to tell how much a conservation ethic contributed to the drop in demand.  "It’s been a one-two punch with the economy tanking and all the foreclosures," Van Dyke said.  Still, the message people have heard for years about the ills of wasting water contributes to the situation.  Tampa’s water department saw revenue from water sales fall by $3 million, or 9 percent, from Oct. 1, 2007, through Sept. 30, 2009.

But utilities don’t intend to stop preaching the benefits of saving water.  "It was all done with the right motive and intent. We will continue to hammer the message," said Elias Franco, demand manager for the Tampa Water Department.  Hillsborough County also will not back off on urging people to conserve.  "We are always going to stress the importance of conservation. On the good side, people are extremely aware they need to save water," Van Dyke said.

That shouldn’t be a surprise.  Residents in the Tampa Bay area have been limited to once weekly lawn watering since 2007 because of rainfall that remained stubbornly below normal for years.  Individual utilities and the Southwest Florida Water Management District constantly implored residents to cut back, especially last spring when water supplies were extremely tight.

Hillsborough’s water department noticed a drop in demand and revenue a year ago that translated into a need to lop $5.3 million from the department’s budget. Cuts included eliminating 17 positions and delaying construction projects. The department also increased rates by 1.7 percent. That amounted to 93 cents a month for households using 6,000 gallons a month, the amount the department considers average.  Increases could come every year, pegged on what the state Public Service Commission sets as the inflation rate.  The small annual increases might not be enough to avoid a larger bump, Van Dyke said.

Tampa Bay Water, the region’s wholesale supplier, expects another increase in October, when its next budget goes into effect.  The regional utility is selling less water than anticipated. Tampa Bay Water expected to sell 176 million gallons a day to its six members: Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties, plus Tampa, St. Petersburg and New Port Richey.  Instead, the amount has been between 160 million gallons and 166 million gallons a day.  Any increase in the wholesale price could be passed on to customers in October.

Dirty water is killing more people than wars and other violence, the United Nations announced on World Water Day.  Almost all dirty water produced in homes, businesses, farms, and factories in developing countries is washed into rivers and seas without being decontaminated.  And up to 60 percent of supplies that have been purified to the point that they are potable are lost through leaky pipes and ill-maintained sewage networks, according to a report released today. Saving half of these lost supplies could give clean water to 90 million people without the need for costly new infrastructure, says the UN.

"The sheer scale of dirty water means more people now die from contaminated and polluted water than from all forms of violence including wars," the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said.  This includes 2.2 million people whose deaths are attributed to diarrhea, mostly from dirty water, and 1.8 million children aged under five who succumb to water-borne diseases. This equates to one infant every 20 seconds.

The findings were presented during a three-day conference held in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, to coincide with the annual focus on clean and sustained water supplies for a human population expected to grow by 50 percent in the next four decades.

"If the world is to survive on a planet of 6 billion people heading to over 9 billion by 2050, we need to get smarter about how we manage wastewaters," Achim Steiner, UNEP’s director, said in a press release. "Wastewater is quite literally killing people."

Yet correctly treated waste water is often cleaner than the drinking water many people use, but they refuse to consider re-cycling treated waste water.  It’s a funny old world

Talk about leading the market.  You could almost count the number of smart meters in any given water utility’s area without running out of fingers and toes, but already the vendors are ready to sell water utilities something that sounds great – every home should have one.

“Gentrack, a leading supplier of smart billing and CRM solutions to energy and water utilities, on Friday announced a new partnership with Outpost Central, a developer of the new Outpost LiveWaterTM  and Outpost EclipseTM real-time water monitoring technologies. Designed as an affordable solution for monitoring and tracking water usage, the Eclipse logger collects and stores data at regular intervals and sends it to the Outpost LiveWaterTM online portal for consumers to access and make decisions on water usage.  Data is also sent to the Gentrack Velocity CRM solution for additional analysis by utilities, input to consumer campaigns and to support call centre staff who require a 360 degree view of consumer water usage.”

Why Friday?  The national Australian Water Association conference starts on Monday in Brisbane, and there’s nothing like having a big announcement to drive the punters to your stand, now is there?

In late 2009 OFWAT, the UK regulator, published a final determination for water prices for the next period.  On average, OFWAT decided that the water companies must keep customer bills flat while embarking on massive capital investment plans.  That produced the usual chest-beating from the regulated utilities who promised that the end of civilisation was at hand.  The Daily Telegraph, for example, reported in mid-January that “United Utilities is expected to embark on a’"major’ cost-cutting drive that could see it shed 10pc-20pc of its workforce, as it prepares this week to accept harsh restrictions on pricing set by the regulator.”

A longer story in the Financial Times later that month reported Professor Martin Cave, an expert in utility regulation at Warwick University, saying the he suspects that the industry has been “crying wolf”.  “It’s difficult to reconcile the cries of outrage with the fact that they’ve accepted the judgment,” Prof Cave said.

In the preceding five years bills had been allowed to rise more quickly than inflation. Profits were higher than expected as the companies were able to borrow at lower rates than had been assumed by OFWAT. Many investors, the FT suggested, had grown used to equity-like returns for risk levels more akin to fixed income securities.

Then, at the beginning of February, the price of shares in Northumbrian Water soared when it was believed that a Canadian-based Teachers’ Pension Fund was buying the shares – possibly even mounting a takeover.  Then on February 18 the Fund announced it was ruling out any such plans.  The stock price fell back.

Mississippi, whose governor was due to give his state-of-the-state address this week, is closing its state government for a fourth day and postponing the official speech because of a leaky water system, Bloomberg reports.  Governor Haley Barbour, who declared a state of emergency in the capital, Jackson, on Jan. 11, ordered state offices be closed Jan. 14, the fourth day offices have shut, and he delayed his annual outline of Mississippi’s finances until Jan. 18.  Jackson city officials have been repairing about 110 water line breaks that have reduced water pressure and forced residents to boil water before drinking, the city said in a press release from Mayor Harvey Johnson. The breaks were caused by freezing weather that moved through the area last week.  “Mayor Johnson and city officials still urge those citizens who have running water to continue to conserve water until thee system pressure is fully restored,” the city said in its release.  The leaks have led to closing of public schools and universities, according to the city’s Web site.

Two different stories recently have highlighted moves towards smart metering for water.  Smart metering may also mean smarter water billing software.  In a recent speech at Chatham House in London, IBM Chairman, President and CEO Sam Palmisano laid out IBM’s vision of the next decade as the decade of the smarter systems. Among the many areas IBM is focusing on to enable a smarter planet is smart water management.  "By a smarter planet, we mean that intelligence is being infused into the systems and processes that enable services to be delivered; physical goods to be developed, manufactured, bought and sold; everything from people and money to oil, water and electrons to move; and billions of people to work and live."

Software lies at the heart of these systems. IBM’s acquisition of MRO Software in 2006 enhanced Big Blue’s decades-long work in the rail, water and other vertical industries by adding asset management capabilities. IBM attained MRO’s Maximo asset management software in that acquisition, and Maximo is a key component of IBM’s Smarter Planet initiatives because it helps organizations track each and every asset across their enterprises—spanning both physical and IT assets, IBM officials said.  You can find more on this story at eWeek.

Not to be left out Oracle, another software vendor, published the results of a recent survey of more than 300 water utility managers: 68 percent said they believe it is critical that water utilities adopt smart meter technologies. At least 36 states are projecting water shortages between now and 2013.  Oracle also found most of the 1,200 U.S. consumers it surveyed felt water conservation was important to them. Specifically, 76 percent said they are concerned about the need to conserve water and said their behavior changes were motivated more by a desire to conserve than to reduce water bill costs. Seventy-one percent said having access to more detailed information about their water consumption would be a key factor in helping motivate their conservation.

IT analyst Charles King said he’s not surprised Oracle would promote smart meter adoption for the water industry. "Someone on the back end has to crunch all the data, and now that Oracle has Sun it can make the case they have a hardware/software solution. IBM (NYSE: IBM) has been promoting the same thing," King, principal analyst with Pund-IT, told InternetNews.com. "Whether you’re talking about electricity or water or some other utility, it’s an enormously distributed, complex network of data."   You can read more details here.