Set high in the San Juan Mountains, 300 miles southwest of Denver, PAWSD’s service territory encompasses over 76 square miles and receives more than 100” of snow each year. This makes accessing the water meter nearly impossible and has made it necessary for PAWSD to estimate bills for its 4,800 residential water customers nearly half the year.

Customer Service Manager Lisa Dermody said, “We’ve never been able to read our residential meters during the winter. So every spring, we’ve had five months of estimated billings to reconcile against that first reading we take in April. This means there are hundreds of bills to adjust, credits to issue and customer calls to handle. But MOSAIC will allow us to bill from actual usage, year-round - eliminating that entire ‘catch-up period’ and the additional time spent by staff dealing with the issues caused by estimating customer bills.

Dermody continued, “Spring is also when we start finding all of the leaks that have started over the winter. We’re in an area prone to droughts and we’re extremely conservation-conscious. So, we’ve never been comfortable with the fact that leaks could go on for months before we’d know about them. Treated water gets wasted and customers have to pay for it. But our MOSAIC system will notify us of leaks quickly. We’re really excited about that. It’s good for the environment and good for our customers.”

MOSAIC is a “mesh” network. This means that all FIREFLY Meter Interface Units (FF) also function as repeaters for the transmissions of other neighboring FFs. Data is transmitted – or “hopped” – from FF to FF toward a gateway, similar to the way someone might jump from rock to rock to cross a river. Transmissions follow any path necessary to efficiently navigate the network; circumventing environmental obstacles along the way. Should any path become unavailable, the network “self-heals” and dynamically routes data via an alternate path.

“MOSAIC’s self-healing mesh capabilities was another key to our decision. It’s ideal for our service territory. We have mountains, dense forests and heavy snow. Getting line-of-sight between all of our meters and one or more towers was going to be difficult – and very expensive. Thankfully, MOSAIC doesn’t require that. The FIREFLYs use each other to hop around obstacles.

“We’re also investigating the possibility of implementing MOSAIC’s Permalog Acoustic Leak Detection and Remote Shutoff Valve capabilities in the future.” Dermody said.

“All utilities face challenges unique to their geography and climate,'' said Rich Sanders, Datamatic Vice President of Sales and Business Development. “We’re thrilled to partner with PAWSD and that MOSAIC is such a decisive solution to their long-standing billing, conservation and deployment challenges.”

“Using a conservative Return on Investment model, we expect the system to pay for itself in less than three years and to give us positive cash flow of $5-6 million over the life of the system. From an economic standpoint, it’s an excellent decision for us.” Dermody concluded.

System installation is expected to be completed by October.

Utilities interested in Datamatic’s AMR solutions should contact Rich Sanders at (972) 234-5000.