Intelligent Metering offers a future solution

Intelligent Metering provides a two-way communication facility between the meter direct to the utility company and in South Africa’s case this would be our Municipality.

What it does is it communicates and provides on-demand information and control to the Municipality. The Intelligent Metering system reduces the need for-and cost of-field or network operators as the information is communicated directly to the utility company.

This allows for better analysis by the utility company. By looking at the data from your Intelligent Metering system,  that the company can now access at any time, these companies can understand consumption, identify theft, manage demand and identify outages in a near real time.

For the first time, basic information is available directly from the source.

It uses this two-way communication facility to create other industry infrastructure to help manage and improve our utility usage.

Smart Meter, the wiser choice

What is a Smart Meter?

This meter is a new kind of energy meter that shall replace your existing one. With its two-way communication system, it automatically sends electronic meter readings to the energy supplier-in South Africa’s case, the Municipality.

This eliminates the need for someone to physically take your meter reading.

Why choose a Smart Meter?

No longer will you receive an estimated utility bill at the end of each month. Smart meters have an accurate meter reading and so an exact summary of your water consumption will be received as opposed to a previously estimated one.

Your water meter now lets you see how much water you are using at different times of the day, month or year. This feature allows you to examine your water usage and see where you could be more energy efficient.

Although Smart Meters are an initial expensive technology, the life cycle cost is far less than that of your conventional water meter.

Benefits of Prepaid Water Meters

What is a Prepaid Water Meter?

Basically, your Prepaid Water Meter works like a prepaid phone. You determine the amount you wish to spend per month on water.

With this device, a meter is installed and programmed to dispense your pre-agreed and determined amount of water each day. If the daily limit is reached, the flow of water stops until the next day when the daily allowance is once again available.

Unused water allocations are carried over to the next day, but have to be used before the end of the month as it is not carried over monthly.

What you are paying for in terms of your water quality is exactly the same as before and the price that you pay for water with your Prepaid Water meter is the same of per Municipality rates.

What benefits do I gain when changing over?

• Water in South Africa is very scarce, therefore very expensive. With a prepaid water meter you are forced to watch how much you spend and use, because the more you use, the more you will be spending.
• Here you have the power to control your water usage, allowing you to pre-determine and budget your expenditure monthly.
• You avoid unexpected water cut-offs as you pay for your water up-front.
• There is less administration involved.
• You avoid hassles such as leakages, faulty meters and misreadings on your meters that would normally lead to high water bills each month.
• Access to your free 6000 litres per month is guaranteed.

Domestic Water Meters

Millions of Domestic Water Meters are used around South Africa and every day new water meters are installed or old ones replaced.

Water meters are used to measure the volumes of water that passes through the specified meter and sold to us as consumers. (This reaches us in the form of a water bill, unless a Prepaid water meter is used)

There four basic components that all of our water meters include:

• A device to detect the flow of water passing through the meter.
• A device that transmits the signal detected by the actual sensor to the other parts of the meter
• A device to keep track of the flow of water that has passed through the meter
• A device that communicates the readings to the meter reader.

Domestic Water Meters can either Conventional or Pre-Paid. Let’s review the two:

Conventional vs. Pre-paid

Conventional metering consists of installing a water meter for the consumer and setting up its connection to send monthly water bills based on the actual consumption that you have used for the month.

Pre-paid meters require you to purchase in advance your water for the month and you choose exactly how much you wish to spend.