Case study

The City of Fredricksburg improves billing efficiency with Elster

At a glance:

• The City of Fredricksburg in Texas has over 10,000 water and electricity meters.
• It required an automated system that would allow devices to be accessed remotely.
• Elster Electricity’s EnergyAxis System was selected for its user­friendly features and technical functionality.

The challenge:

The ability to improve billing efficiencies and customer service while implementing the necessary technology with minimum disruption is at the heart of an ambitious project that Elster Electricity is currently performing for.

Taking place over three years, the project will see more than 10,000 electric and water meters at both residential and commercial locations in the city brought under one automated system.

Having limited staff with increasing responsibilities, the city wanted to implement a state-of-the-art advanced meter reading system that did not require extensive planning or resources to deploy. Another important factor was the system’s ability to read water meters in service areas.

The solution:

Fredricksburg selected Elster Electricity’s EnergyAxis System for the scheme, citing its user­friendly features and capability for remotely accessing meter data.

The EnergyAxis System works by recognising each meter on the network - eliminating the need for on-site programming and making installation and operation both easy and economical.

It interfaces directly with Elster’s own REX meters, but is also designed to connect to multiple vendors’ AMR-enabled meters.

Using a powerful two-way RF communications system to retrieve metering information directly from meters, the communication network uses a spread spectrum, frequency-hopping technology to ensure the communication between the meters and data collectors is secure and reliable.

Through the use of this innovative technology, Fredricksburg expects to improve billing efficiencies with more accurate and timely bills by performing on-demand meter readings.

Commenting on the project, Russell Immel, information systems manager at the City of Fredericksburg said: “It has been a pleasure working with the Elster support team on this project.

“The preparation, training, thoroughness of installation, quick response time, and follow­up by the Elster team have been excellent.”

Future plans include the deployment of remote connect and disconnect functionality and improved customer service, using the system’s ability to perform daily reads and to retrieve historical meter data.