Temetra Newsletter March 2005
Longford Metering Project and Temetra
Since the end of summer 2004, Longford County Council has been installing water meters in the county, using Temetra to maintain all the information related to each meter installation, and the subsequent reading tours.
Commenting on the use of Temetra, Bernard Shea, Executive Engineer Sanitary Services Longford County Council said, "We're delighted with Temetra. It fits right in with our roll-out strategy, with specific fields used to link Temetra, Agresso and CIS, and full photographic history of installations and re-instatement."
As the first pre-billing reading tours are completed, consumption information displayed in Temetra can be used to identify unusual patterns and inform customers prior to the first volumetric bill. Problem connections are quickly identified and resolved while people are still in the area.
"Being able to access the information from any office, from home, or in the field means we are sure the data is always up to date with our latest work" said Michael Scally, Senior Executive Technician in charge of the water metering project. "For meter readers, Temetra has all appropriate information like townland address and connection tagging displayed on the handheld, to make the reading process as straightforward as possible, and less reliant on local knowledge."
AMR is being used where the particular meters justify the need; access problems, hard-to-read meters, high-volume consumers, or where the extended data provided by Actaris Cyble transponders helps in usage analysis, and Temetra allows changes or upgrade of meters to be quickly updated in the system.
As a fully hosted service, Temetra allowed Longford County Council to get up and running quickly with data collection, safe in the knowledge that all information was securely managed and backed up, without burden on in-house staff. Longford's in-house planning prior to meter installation has ensured steady progress towards fully volumetric billing in time for the 2006 deadline, and Temetra is happy to be part of their success.
GSM Telemetry Solutions - Pump Activation using Temetra
Temetra now offers control telemetry via GSM, using the alarms in Gero DL09 loggers. This allows applications such as reservoir levels driving pumps, where a DL09 with depth transducer in the reservoir is configured to alarm at different points, and this in turn activates or deactivates the pumps.
With flow, pressure and level inputs available, and a variety of power options, the DL09 logger make for a very flexible and cost-effective source of telemetry data, suitable for use where traditional SCADA is inappropriate, or the harsh conditions make other solutions unreliable.
The control outputs are normally configured with full interlock, giving positive feedback on all switching events, and immediate alarms in the case of failure via text message and/or emails.
Full details of all device alarms and activation events are stored in the Temetra database, with viewing and control through the web application.
With all devices hosted on Temetra, you get the benefits of high-availability and redundancy, along with access from anywhere with a web connection.
Ongoing improvements to Temetra web application
- More domestic allowance rules for billing
- Itemised billing information for all SMS traffic
- More display options on logger data
- Derived meters - allows subtraction and addition of meters to ease billing on spurs
- Miscellaneous update to reports and display information