CASE STUDY: Operational efficiency, leak detection and improved customer service in Armagnac
The water utility company, SAT32 (Syndicat des eaux Armagnac Tenareze), serves 15 municipalities and 11,000 inhabitants via a 730km drinking water network.
The mission: With an ageing stock of water meters, the water company decided to renew its 6,800 water meters. Specifically, SAT32 wanted to improve the operational efficiency of the staff dedicated to meters as well as the quality of service provided to customers.
The solution: The water company turned to SUEZ to install a smart metering system to provide remote reading and billing based on actual consumption. The new system enabled customers to be alerted more quickly in the event of overconsumption and to react without delay when there was a leak.
The metering system consists of:
- Meters supplied by manufacturers such as DIEHL Metering, Itron, Sensus, Honeywell etc.
- Specified according to the Wize protocol by the SUEZ teams to communicate with
- Fixed receivers (concentrator) or mobile receivers
- Collecting up to 24 reading per day, fully compliant with personal data regulations
- Designed for daily transmissions: 1, 4 or 8 submissions/day
- Compact for easy installation in tight spaces
- Waterproof and durable with a 15-year life span
- Bidirectional, providing remote diagnosis and problem solving, software updates, setting, etc.
The results: The client was very satisfied with the results.
- More reliable billing, which helped reduce the number of rebate requests
- Standardisation of the meter fleet
- Improved quality of customer service
- Accurate leak detection enabling the utility or the customer to fix them as quickly as possible
- Non-revenue water improvements
- Optimised operations
Nicolas Bourdiol, Director of Technical Services for SAT32 commented;
“Today, we’ve all found it easier to work, whether it’s for billing or for the quality of service to customers, and we’re getting very positive feedback from our customers.
Smart metering has enabled us to see that there were a lot of leaks after the meter in our area, mainly from private homes and farms.”
