Facts and trends about smart metering for UK water utilities.

1. What a major water company in the UK
should do in the area of smart metering?
What are the key areas of investment and benefit?
By Guillaume FERY
Guillaume FERY – http://orignal.blogspirit.com August 2010 - p1

2. An introduction to smart metering
See impact of football match France-Spain on water supply in Paris
27 june 2006 (3-1)
Sources: Eau de Paris
Guillaume FERY – http://orignal.blogspirit.com August 2010 - p2

3. Smart metering ?
What it is : What it is not
• Technology
• Information about water
and network efficiency • Millions of data
• Databases
• New operational
organisation • Standards
• Measure and control • Costs
• IT
• Customer satisfaction
• « Big brother »
• Opportunity for New
• A new device in the
prices & New services living room
Guillaume FERY – http://orignal.blogspirit.com August 2010 - p3

4. Waterfacts: it is time to act
• Customers
– Bills mostly not in line with real consumption
– Customer / Changing lifestyle & behaviour / smart
homes
– Only 1/3 of domestic properties are metered. They are
going to be equiped
– Demographic changes + transparancy expectations
• Ressource :
– Climate change and ressource issue are the biggest Introducing
threat to the sustainability of water services Smart Metering
– Leakage control / Asset management / prioritize is part of
investments the answer
– Regulate demand in water stress zone
• Water companies are « cash negative » and could
find new revenues Sources: gfery, Water UK, Ofwat,
Water Guide, IWA
Guillaume FERY – http://orignal.blogspirit.com August 2010 - p4

5. Smart metering is expensive
hardware, software, implementation, maintainance, exploitation
CAPEX, OPEX: cost analysis
CAPEX Network 5%
CAPEX 68% CAPEX Overhead 1%
OPEX 32% CAPEX electronic transmiters 49%
CAPEX Software
CAPEX Meter 13%
OPEX IT, licenses 8%
OPEX Overhead 3%
OPEX Maintenance 13%
OPEX Stock, asset management 8%
Source : gfery
About 15 to 20 pounds/year/customer
Smart metering deployment and running can double domestic customer fixed costs.
Who is going to pay for it ? What is the value proposition ?
Guillaume FERY – http://orignal.blogspirit.com August 2010 - p5

6. … and benefits
• Improve customer satisfaction, introducing accurate billing
(and firstly a meter sometimes)
• Better asset management : monitoring meters running (or not)
• Improve network management with real time leakage
information and find non revenu water
• Improve resource management
• Modernise CRM and operations
• Create new services from data to information with other
stakeholders
Guillaume FERY – http://orignal.blogspirit.com August 2010 - p6

7. Where to start ?
• Analyse
– What is the meter installed base ? Make, age ?
– What type of customers ? Who are the bigest ? The ones for who water matters
– Is the yield hight enough ? Is there resource monitoring issue somewhere ?
– What do you really know today about water consumption in your area ?
• Imagine
– New services to create value satisfaction: alerting, monitoring, acurate billing, etc.
– New tarifs to increase customer satisfaction
– New parterships to use data and create relevant information for the city
• Evaluate
– Ability to implement such a projet. Skills and people availabilty to create a dedicated
task force
– Impact on front/office and back office and people’s skills to run and maintain the
system
– Budget available for such strategy. Impact on capex/opex
Guillaume FERY – http://orignal.blogspirit.com August 2010 - p7

8. Conclusion: SWOT analysis
Strenghts Weaknesses
Existing clients Skills (IT, broadband, etc.)
Know-how about metering Deep operational impact –
Project management skills
change management
Legitimacy to manage data lifecycle from Capex / added value needed
end to end
Opportunity Threats
No standards
Strongs drivers : technology,
customer, regulator, « smart grid » Relies strongly on technology and IT issues
and « smart city » effect Ability to meet the deadlines (complexity)
Starting point for a revolution in the Strong and established business case to
business : new offers, new create
business models (tarifs, etc.) New competitors
Better asset & ressource Privacy issues
management
Assets owner strategy
Guillaume FERY – http://orignal.blogspirit.com August 2010 - p8

9. Thank you
Guillaume FERY
+44 787 597 4124
feryguillaume@googlemail.com
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/gfery
http://orignal.blogspirit.com
Guillaume FERY – http://orignal.blogspirit.com August 2010 - p9