coming years, one would think we’d be seeing a roll out of smart
water meters<\/a> akin to the national effort being made to smarten up the power
grid.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The payoff could be enormous. Water agencies and consumers
would be able to detect leaking pipes and toilets in real-time and fix the
problem before the water literally goes down the drain.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Imagine a video screen in your shower that displays how many
gallons that long hot shower is consuming. Smart water meters would also open
the door to financial incentives to get people to use less water and penalize
water hogs. (That said, politically
powerful agribusiness remains by far the biggest water user.)<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“You don’t need to send someone out to read the meter or
roll a truck to connect or disconnect a meter,” says Guerry Waters, vice
president for industry strategy at Oracle Utilities, a division of the Silicon
Valley software giant. “Smart water meters can help you manage assets and detect
leaks. There’s a staggering amount of water lost to leaks.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Yet, according to a <\/p>\n Why? Money.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Nearly all water providers are public agencies, which means <\/p>\n In fact, 75 percent of the water managers surveyed said the <\/p>\n That presents a conundrum to companies like Oracle, which <\/p>\n IBM, meanwhile, has developed sensor <\/p>\n “Water districts don’t have the funding and have to find a <\/p>\n One solution would be to devote some stimulus money or other <\/p>\n But Tom Blaisdel, a venture <\/p>\n Putting aside agricultural use—which in California is a <\/p>\n For Harris, the future of water conservation lies more in <\/p>\n “It’s all about giving customers a smart water toolbox,” he says.<\/p>\n Related Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n State of the Union: Inefficient<\/a><\/p>\n How innovative financing is changing energy in America<\/a><\/p>\n Supreme Court ruling increases importance of local energy<\/a><\/p>\n
recent report<\/a> by Oracle, while 68 percent of 300 American and Canadian water managers
surveyed said they believe that smart water meters are crucial, 64 percent of
them have no plans to install them.<\/p>\n
they’re strapped for cash and already facing a long list of capital improvement
projects. The electric utility industry, on the other hand, is largely private
and can either make the capital investments necessary for, say, a smart meter
roll out, or can obtain regulators’ approval to raise rates to cover the costs.<\/p>\n
capital costs of smart water meters was their main roadblock to rolling out
such a program.<\/p>\n
already sells software and services to water districts, hoping to tap a
potentially vast smart water meter market.<\/p>\n
networks and software<\/a> it hopes to market to water districts to give them
real-time data on water quality and to help manage their pipelines and
infrastructure.<\/p>\n
way to pay for these systems,” Drew Clark, director of strategy for IBM’s
Venture Capital Group, told me last year. “There’s this whole issue of how do
we put this intelligence in water systems in a way that’s affordable for the
ratepayers.”<\/p>\n
federal largesse to underwrite a rollout of smart meters.<\/p>\n
capitalist with DCM in Silicon Valley, thinks markets are the answer. “The
problem in water is usually not a lack of technology but a lack of economic
drivers to get people to adopt the technology,” he says. “Until you have market
pricing you won’t have innovation and investment.”<\/p>\n
political minefield—residential water pricing tends to be driven by drought
and conservation mandates. As California’s drought dragged on, EBMUD and other water
agencies imposed a tiered pricing structure that bumped up rates for water
hogs.<\/p>\n
providing data to customers rather than such things as rebates for
water-efficient toilets.<\/p>\n
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