In the early 1990s, Flint EMC began experimenting with remote meter reading. It had no intention of outsourcing the function at its 61-year-old co-op encompassing 58,000 meters and 16 counties in west-central Georgia, U.S.A..
But that is where the 202-employee utility finds itself today, with Schlumberger Resource Management Services Inc. doing all of its remote meter reading in 1998 under a unique partnership. Flint began by converting 5,000 of its meters with retrofitted remote meter reading devices on a test basis.
"That worked so well we went back in and changed an additional 25,000 meters," says Knight. "Since then, all of the new meters we have added the last couple of years have been R-300 remote-read meters." At this point, Flint decided to purchase Schlumberger meters with the remote device already installed, rather than retrofitting existing meters.
Ultimately, with the capacity of the Schlumberger-Itron-equipped remote meter-reading van greatly exceeding the Flint customer base, the goal is to add neighboring utilities within a 50- to 75-mile radius of the Flint service territory and to add gas and water meters in places like Warner Robins, which has a municipal water and gas utility overlapping with Flint's electric customers.
Flint EMC for most of the 1990s has been using the Itron "premier-plus" hand-held devices to read its meters both manual and remote reads, says Julian Knight, Flint EMC's data processing and accounting manager. "When the project is completed, we will depend on Schlumberger to read all of these meters remotely through its van technology. So our goal is to completely outsource most of our remote meter reading by the end of the year," says Knight. "The theory of getting close to the customer and establishing a relationship with them throughout a growing business holds true when you see this type of story unfolding as it has with Flint EMC," says Tommy Childress, Schlumberger director of systems.
"We are trying to grow the measurement information business and use our core measurement (metering) business as the springboard. The best example of this is at Flint, which is an application that demonstrates (1) there is real opportunity, and (2) the relationship with the customer enables opportunities in other areas."
In 1998, Flint began changing out its remaining 17,000 manually read meters, including all of its residential meters. The $79 million (1997 operating revenues) electric co-op has determined payback for this final meter investment will take two years. After 1998, there will be 3,000 manually read, demand meters for nonresidential customers, but those, too, eventually will be changed out, says Knight.
Traditionally, Schlumberger was providing meters with the radio frequency (RF) product and hand-held devices to Flint for the co-op's own meter reading staff. "It got to the point that Flint was looking to minimize its investment in the capital-intensive (metering) products the van or hand-held devices," Childress says. "They were looking to get the meter readings without making a big investment in the technology. That coincided with the Schlumberger decision to branch out from traditional meter supplying to services that are complementary to those metering products."
In September, Schlumberger signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Itron outlining how the companies will be working together on mobile and hand-held system solutions, for which the Flint EMC work is the first example.
The two companies are offering the utility industry throughout North America an integrated mobile and hand-held AMR system that will be compatible with the Schlumberger and Itron hand-held and mobile reading systems. That is the end product they are providing Flint EMC where Schlumberger will provide meter reading of 58,000 R-300 and ERT-equipped meters, using a service vehicle outfitted with an Itron DataCommand Unit and host software developed by Itron.
"Our goal is to provide our clients with the most cost-effective system and service solutions in this new era of competition in a deregulated marketplace," says Kitterman, ..
Johnny Humphreys, Itron president, chairperson and CEO, says Itron and Schlumberger bring industry leadership throughout North America for electricity, gas and water companies, "joining our technologies and market experiences to give our clients the best possible system solution."
"So far it is working very fine," Knight says. "Up until this last phase, we have been reading about 35,000 meters remotely with the hand-held devices, and our meter readers going out and riding around to read them. We could completely saturate the system with remote meters and then read them with the van technology.
"We think it is going to work great. And there are definitely going to be some cost-savings." What has been the reaction of Flint EMC's customers? "We haven't had any," Knight says. "It's gone over real well with them. We try to keep our entire membership informed of what we are doing through our newsletter. That helps. "The bottom line with our customers is not so much how you read the meter, but rather whether you give them good service at a good price. This system helps us do that."
Childress stresses, Schlumberger will target other states, such as California, in which a significant amount of potential new metering and meter service business is developing with the restructuring of the electricity and gas industries. But the company also is looking at smaller states with a large number of municipal and rural electric cooperative utilities, such as Indiana, Ohio, Iowa and South Carolina.
"We have both direct sales and distribution channels into the electric, water and gas markets in North America," says Childress, who notes that among the smaller, more prevalent muni and co-op utilities, outsourcing has been going on for some time and decision-making is generally quicker than in the traditionally larger and more self-sufficient investor -owned utilities.
"And we are using those channels to pitch not only our meters, but the services as well. Utilities are realizing that they can take advantage of our decades of experience in water, gas and electricity –and we are realizing that we are a wealth of information for them. It's a cost-effective win-win situation for everyone."
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