PLANO, TEXAS — June 8, 2005 — Officials from the City of Santa Fe, New Mexico have awarded a contract to install an automated meter reading system of FIREFLY® Radio water Meter Interface Units to Datamatic of Plano, Texas. The installation is designed to help the city manage conservation efforts. Datamatic has been a leading supplier of enterprise meter reading solutions for gas, water and electric utilities worldwide since 1980.

“Santa Fe is committed to water conservation as part of Gov. Richardson’s Drought Mitigation initiative, said Ken Kercher, Datamatic President and CEO. “Because of frequent periods of drought, the city was seeking an AMR system that could help water conservation through leak detection and compliance to water schedules. Our flexible AMR collection system and profiling software generates timely reports that easily highlights usage data and leaks.”

The oldest continuous capital in America, Santa Fe’s unique cityscape couples 17th century family compounds with new, gated developments built up the mountainside. The utility serves over 27,000 residential customers and nearly 3,000 commercial customers including high water users such as hotels, restaurants, schools and government facilities.

“While having current data is critical, gaining access to meters in Santa Fe is a significant problem,” said City of Santa Fe Finance Director, Kathryn Raveling. “Many structures are inaccessible because of the many narrow streets and alleys. We’ve even had difficulty accessing our newest structures because they’re within a gated community or are owned by seasonal residents. Datamatic’s remote meter reading has helped us take on this task while also addressing our water shortage.”

With limited water sources and intense growth, the municipality faces restrictions on water use that can drive up the cost for each gallon. The City of Santa Fe has aggressively worked to meet the needs of its residents with innovative programs such as replacing toilets with low flow units and hitting excessive commercial water users with surcharges. The AMR agreement was inked after the city successfully completed a comprehensive pilot program to test the value of Datamatic’s system. During that initial program, a Datamatic system including 1,000 FIREFLY units was deployed within the city.

All FIREFLY Meter Interface Units archive consumption data at user-definable intervals. For example, when set to record hourly readings, each water FIREFLY can hold the previous 74.6 days of hour-by-hour consumption information. This data, previously unavailable without costly fixed networks or flow monitors, is available at every FIREFLY-equipped meter.

Data is extracted from the FIREFLY using a handheld or field laptop computer. It can then be converted and presented in a graph, spreadsheet or another meaningful format using Datamatic’s ProfilePLUS software. This system is invaluable for leak detection, load studies, dispute resolution, meter right-sizing, conservation monitoring and many other applications.

“Water shortages have forced us to be proactive about leak detection,” said City of Santa Fe Utility Billing Director Dave Schmiedicke. “During the pilot program, Datamatic’s system enabled us to identify leaks before a great deal of water was lost. In addition, customers began to understand how they could change bad water usage habits. We even had customers thank us for being notified of a minor leak before it became an expensive problem. I look forward to implementing the program throughout Santa Fe, as it will help us conserve water and save our residents money.”

The City of Santa Fe plans to complete a citywide installation within the next 3 years.

For more information contact:
Mr. Scott Black
TimePiece PR
(214) 520-3430 x303
sblack@timepiecepr.com