Webinar on Demand
AMI Made Easy: New Cellular Variants Add Communications Flexibility for Optimal AMI Coverage & Cost.

Intro:

Mike Skoda: 

The shift towards advanced metering infrastructure, or AMI, is gaining momentum within the water industry. And despite the undeniable advantages of digital water management, many utilities have been hesitant to fully embrace AMI. Now that's due to existing infrastructure challenges and limited coverage. Until recently, achieving a comprehensive coverage has been a uniform approach, leaving significant gaps in service areas.

I'm Mike Skoda. This is the Water Online webinar series. And today we're talking AMI Made Easy, New Cellular Variants Add Communications Flexibility for Optimal AMI Coverage and Cost.

Now joining me for this presentation is an industry expert from Kamstrup, Vice President of Product Management and Business Development, Joe Ball, who is going to delve into the features and benefits of Kamstrup's Dynamic Communications Portfolio and explore how these meters not only simplify AMI deployment, but also empower utilities by actively listening for and locating leaks. Thereby enhancing the overall operational efficiency and reducing loss.

Now we'll be holding a Q &A session following this presentation. Feel free to submit questions as we go along. We're gonna have plenty of time for Q &A, so please make sure to get your questions in. We'll get to as many as possible during that live Q &A, but any that we don't get to, I'm also gonna pass along to the team to follow up with after the event.

And then just a bit of housekeeping, if you run into any issues today, please try just refreshing your browser first. And then if your problem persists, you can submit a question through that Q &A, and I'll help get you back on track. And then finally, this webinar will be available on demand, usually within a day, often less, and you'll get an email with a link to it, or you can just use the same link that you used today. So, with all that said, I'm gonna turn it over to Joe to get us started.

Main Webinar:

Part 1:

Joe Ball:

Great. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate it. Good morning, everyone. Thanks to everyone who's joined the webinar this morning, and everyone who registered, and he'll be listening to this in their own time. As Mike said, my name is Joe Ball.

I'm Vice President of Product Manager and Business Development for Kamstrup here in North America, and I'm going to talk to you really about AMI Made Easy. And the main point of that, the way we feel about AMI Made Easy, is the flexible communications that we have.

So, before I jump into talking a little bit about AMI, I want to give the folks that are maybe not familiar with Kamstrup a little bit of information about Kamstrup. So, as you can see on the slide here, we're a world leading manufacturer of advanced solid state metering solutions for both smart energy and smart water utilities.

Our focus in North America is smart water utilities. We've been in business for over 75 years. We're globally headquartered in Denmark, and our North American headquarters is in Cumming Georgia. We have globally about 1,800 employees, spread around 20 plus countries in North America.

We're located mostly in US and Canada, about 130 employees that support the business here in North America, everywhere from sales, product management, marketing, delivery, support, HR, accounting. So, a full team that supports the business here in North America.

We've been, one of the things about Kamstrup is we are an ultrasonic meter and technology company. So, we've been doing that for over 30 years. And that's where our focus is. All the meters that we sell today are all ultrasonic meters.

We've been doing business in North America for over 10 years, and we've shipped over two million meters to our North American customers. And we have the lowest return rate in the industry here in North America at 0.25%.

So great, reliable products that we have. And our focus here, like I mentioned, is smart water utility solutions, ultrasonic water metering, advanced communications, our software applications, and our service and support teams.

Part 2:

Joe Ball:

So now let me jump into the topic at hand, which is AMI Made Easy. So, I'm going to just set the stage here for everyone with the benefits of AMI. So, we could all kind of level set on some of the things that we get from our AMI system, and then I'll start talking about the communications. 

So, let's start from the left to right here. Let's talk about our improved financial outcomes. So, what we're talking about when we're talking about improved financial outcomes are a couple of different things.

We're talking about improved capture revenue. So because we have proven ultrasonic metering technology with 20 -year accuracy for each of those meters over their whole life, we also have really low flow accuracy in each of those meters that gives us the ability to record water consumption at an eighth of a gallon in your approved water-efficient appliances that are being deployed now, or deployed is probably the one where it's installed and used in our residence.

There's a lot of water that are very small uses throughout the day, so that improved low flow really captures more revenue for the utilities. We also have the ability to reduce costs. So, as you talk about improved financial outcomes, it also kind of segues into the next one, which is reduced risk and ease of operation.

We reduce costs with our AMI solution by reducing the amount of truck rolls that you have. So with the data that comes back from the field, we have different alarms and alerts and the ability for utility personnel to kind of identify some problems that are out there, determine troubleshooting within the office and how to roll, when to roll a truck with the most qualified field employees on there to be able to address the issues that are out there.

So instead of rolling a truck and trying to identify what the issue is as they approach that residence or business, you'll already have that information in hand so you can deploy the correct team with the correct equipment on their truck to be able to fix the issue that's going out there.

So reduced truck rolls gives us the ability to really make your business much more efficient and save you costs. From a reduced risk perspective, you are now eliminating or reducing the number of folks that you have out in the field.

Reducing the safety factor for your meter readers that are out there, reducing risk around damage because you're identifying leaks both at a customer and in the distribution network. And it also gives you the ability to have that information to really increase your customer service, your customer satisfaction.

You can now talk to your customers with real data, interval data at the fingertips of your customer service representatives to help answer customer questions for you. We have the ability to interface with many best-in-class customer portals that are out there.

So, we could actually have that data integrated with that customer portal to provide notifications to your customers directly about excessive consumption, about potential leaks that are happening at their household.

So not only using that data for your own operations but also gaining a benefit of using that data and engaging with your customers to increase customer satisfaction with those. And then that last box, the path to sustainability, a lot of the things that I talked about also give you the ability to become more sustainable.

When reduced the amount of truck rules, you have lower emissions that are driving around your territory. You have the ability with our solution to be able to identify distribution leaks. So that'll help you lower the water loss that you have and gives you the ability to really make your operations more efficient when it comes to reducing that water loss.

Part 3:

Joe Ball

There are a number of different things that you get from the benefits from our AMI solution that gives you the ability to really enhance your business. You can't realize these benefits if you don't actually get the data into your software systems to be able to take a look at that data and analyze that data.

One of the really exciting things for us here at Kamstrup is this year we're releasing our cellular communications within our meter. So, it's embedded cellular communications in our proven ultrasonic meter that gives us additional flexibility.

Now we can offer our customers a cellular network, an RF network, or a hybrid network of the two to be able to really focus in and tailor the AMI network solution for your needs. This gives us the ability to give you the best coverage at the best cost and it really helps improve the communications and performance because there's not one networking technology that works in every situation.

Our RF network is a licensed 450 to 470 megahertz network. It's got two -way communications, it's got receipt acknowledgement, meaning that as that meter transmits back to the head end software it will actually give an acknowledgement back to the when its information has been received and if it doesn't get that acknowledgement then it has an auto backfill feature which it knows exactly what to send through to the head end software next time it communicates and we do all this with 20-year battery life.

On the cellular side we're leveraging the AT&T network. And we have a full North America roaming agreement where we don't have coverage with AT&T through our agreement with AT&T, we can roam on any network that's out there to the ability to give you the most reliable robust cellular communications as well.

We do have two-way communications on the cellular side also and the same receipt acknowledgement that we get in our RF network. So that cellular meter will know when and what data that it needs to report each time whether it's received an acknowledgement or not.

So that has the auto backfill feature and the 20 -year battery life on our residential meters as well. So again, this is a great tool for us because it gives us the ability to offer that best network solution for our customers and in many areas, it could be full cellular and in other areas it could be a hybrid solution that has the RF meters and the cellular meters in the same solution.

Both of those meters are collected by the same head end and the data is presented in our reading manager software application and there the system doesn't care whether it's an RF meter or a cellular meter that's bringing that data back for your use and analysis.

I'll pause there because on the right side of this you also see our encoded output meters right. So maybe this is not something for our third -party AMI systems so I don't want to skip over the solutions that we have available because if in fact you decided that you wanted to go as a third -party AMI system you can still use our encoded output variant of the meter to be able to get our proven ultrasonic metering technology and just leveraging that third-party AMI systems communications and software applications.

So that comes with our compact design it has all cable variants it includes the event the same advanced alarms that we have on our RF and our cellular solution, and it also includes 20 -year battery life.

So again, it gives you the flexibility to be able to use our proven meters when you decide to go with a third-party AMI system where you have a third-party AMI system already installed.

PART 4:

So, the last and final point that I really wanted to talk to you guys a bit about on this slide is just the benefits that you also get with an RF or a cellular or hybrid network as you may, potentially expanding your geographic territory or your customers.

This gives us the ability to not only look at what your networking solution is for your whole geographic area while we're doing the deployment, the initial deployment of your system, but also continue to look at it as you have new expansion in your area.

Because of the RF and the cellular technologies, it really gives you the ability to go ahead and pinpoint what type of technology you want to use as you expand. If you have a smaller area and you're bringing more residents or businesses on at a slower pace, you may want to use the cellular technology because it's really easy to go ahead and deploy that in the field and not have to put up overhead infrastructure.

But if you do have bigger areas, you could absolutely go ahead and leverage the RF network solution with the cellular solution. That gives you again flexibility on how you're going to continue to expand your system into the future.

And probably a point I should have mentioned earlier is on the front end of your deployment, because of the flexibility of the two communications, it also gives you a lot of different options on how you deploy your solution to start.

Typically in an AMI deployment, you put with an RF network, you put the network up first and then start deploying the meters around it. But with the cellular capabilities, you can do some targeted deployments as well.

You can go ahead and focus on a few different areas and use cellular in those particular areas. And then again, round out your network around that and be able to then have full 100% coverage of your area using both networking technologies.

PART 5:

So, I'll move on now to just a quick little slide here about our metering technology. Mentioned it, innovative ultrasonic technology, industry leading accuracy, 20 year accuracy, and low flow accuracy to give you the ability to have the most data come back into your head end solution to use that data to create operational efficiencies, engage with your customers and get the AMI benefits that you have.

I talked about the embedded flexible communications a bunch on the other slide. What I wanted to really focus here on this slide with is the embedded acoustic leak detection that we get in our meters. Our RF and our cellular meters come with that embedded distribution leak detection inside of each meter.

So, each of our meters are listening to your distribution network to be able to identify acoustic sounds. And we have a software application that we call leak detector that that information is pulled into.

And we use a machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithm to listen to those acoustics and to be able to track the historic acoustic changes that are out there to give us meters that have issues that are getting worse.

And then we have what we call our meters of interest, which are the meters that you should go take a look at and address first in your attempt to go reduce your non-revenue water. So a really strong distribution leak detection solution because it uses all the residential meters from one inch and smaller to be able to bring that acoustic leak detection back through the RF network or the cellular network.

So, a great solution that not only gives you the benefits of the AMI benefits that I talked about earlier, but also gives you the ability to monitor your distribution network and really address non -revenue water or water loss in your system.

So those were the high level items that I wanted to really talk to you about today. I wanted to just give you a little piece of that at a high level, give you the folks that are attending the ability to ask a bunch of questions.

And then we could answer those questions for you. And then we also have our team that will be at ACE that we'd really like to have you guys come by and talk to the real experts on the team from our solution managers or our product managers.

They're going to be there in person. Please come visit us at booth number 2362 at ACE and you can get a lot more detailed information. You can see the meters in action and go ahead and touch and feel if you're attending ACE June 10th through June 13th in Anaheim, California.

Q&A:

Joe Ball:

But now, Mike, I'd love to open it up for some questions.

Mike Skoda:

Yeah, perfect. Thanks, Joe. This was great stuff. We've got some questions rolling in audience members. I should be highlighting the ask a question box on your screen right now. I just saw like five kick in here.

So great. And so if you do have any questions, please submit them. Now we've got some time. Just a couple reminders on your screen right now over to the right. You should see Joe's picture and then also there's a little button with his email address there.

So if you did want to reach out to him directly with any questions. Click on that little email. You can email Joe directly. In addition, there's a link at the bottom right. That'll take you to the water online website for more information about Kamstrup

And then on the left is where you ask your questions. And so let's get into it right now. So could you tell me why Kamstrup doesn't recommend going with a full cellular network.

Joe Ball:

Yeah, Mike, absolutely. So, I alluded to it a little bit during my slide there. I think the real reason we don't recommend full cellular or full RF at this point is because there's not one communication type that actually solves all the problems, right?

We feel like a hybrid or a combination of our cellular and our RF network gives us the best way to get the highest performance in that network at the lowest cost for our customers. So there's different areas and that you would potentially use a different tool in the toolbox to get that 100% coverage of the geographic territory for our customers.

Mike Skoda:

Perfect. Yeah, thanks Joe. And so along those same lines, could you talk about like what are the best use cases for the different communications platforms?

Joe Ball:

Yeah, no problem. I talked a little bit about it as well. And what I think the best use cases for that are, it could be the density in your customer base, in your end customer base that's out there. A lot of times we do an analysis on the cost of the collector and the installation in the area in which you would install that collector, how many meters are covered by that collector, and what is the most economical way to get those readings using networking technology.

So, a perfect example would be going through the cost of the collector and the setup, maybe to handle 50 households or 50 businesses in a particular area. That may be a great use case to use cellular in that scenario because you don't have to deal with putting up the device on over infrastructure and maintaining that device. The device you can get connectivity for those say 50 customers relatively easy with cellular connectivity.

Mike Skoda:

Yeah, perfect. Thanks, Joe. Let's see. So early on, Hector asked, “What does auto backfill mean?”

Joe Ball:

Yes. Great question, Hector. Autoback fill. What that basically means is, because of the receipt acknowledgement, the two -way communications capabilities with our meters, if a meter transmits its data, once it's received in our head -end software, it will send a message back to say, hey, we received your data.

If for some reason, maybe it's an environmental issue, maybe there's a car parked over that meter pit or that box, and the transmission didn't get through, that meter knows it didn't get its acknowledgement.

So next time it's set to report, it will report not only the current information, but the past information that he didn't receive or receive acknowledgement for. So it'll effectively auto -backfill all that interval data into the head -end software.

Mike Skoda:

All right, yeah, perfect. Let's see, up next, coming in from Jonathan, “can these cellular meters be utilized with other meter reading software?”

Joe Ball:

Good question, Jonathan. So, they actually do have the capabilities to be able to do that. We've been using cellular technology, outside of the U.S. or Kamstrup has for the last few years.

And some of the requirements say in the European market have a interoperability between many reading systems. So, the capabilities are there for these meters to, communicate through our common head end and then get pushed to a, third party meter data management system or AMI system.

That would have to, a little bit of work would have to be done with that, with that other third party vendor. So we'd have to do a little partnering on that, but there is the capability to do that. But our market here in the U.S. doesn't typically procure AMI solutions that way, the same that some of the water utilities in Europe do.

Mike Skoda:

Gotcha. Perfect. Thanks, Joe. Up next from Alan, “how accurate are ultrasonic meters compared to positive displacement meters?”

Joe Ball:

That I'm a little bit biased when it comes to that question because we are ultrasonic metering company. We don't do positive displacements or mechanical meters. We feel our technology is much more accurate than positive displacement.

There's a couple of reasons for that. One, we have no moving parts in our ultrasonic meter. So there is no wear and tear on those parts. There's just no slowdown on the mechanics to be able to measure water throughout the life of that product. 

So, we have accuracy over the 20-year life of that meter. And then because we have no moving parts, we have the ability to have really the industry leading low flow, starting low flow and our residential meters.

No moving parts to push those parts to start the measurement. We're using ultrasonic technology. We get a very, very low flow start from our residential meters at 0 .01 gallons per minute.

Mike Skoda:

Perfect, yeah, thanks Joe. Let's see, I got another one here also from Jonathan. He just asked, “when will pricing be available?”

Joe Ball:

Pricing is available now, so if you contact your local regional sales manager from Kamstrup or your local distributor that distributes Kamstrup in your area, they could talk to you about the cost of the meters and provide quotes.

Awesome, yeah perfect. And I'll add one more thing, if for some reason they don't know who that is, maybe they could submit another question in there and we can make sure we get that information to that person.

Mike Skoda:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you can also reach out to Joe as well. His email is on the right side of your screen. I'm sure he can make sure he puts you in touch with the right person.

And so, let's see, coming in from Matthew. "What is a good response to utilities who want to deploy cellular ALD meters in lieu of smart hydrants that detect main breaks?” He's asking, what is a good response to utilities that want to deploy cellular ALD meters in lieu of smart hydrants for main brake detection?

Joe Ball:

Yeah, a good question there. So, I think I'll address this one almost the way I addressed communications. I think that there is a combination of, say, water loss or distribution leak detection that you can use out there.

I really feel the strength of our solution is that it's in all of our meters one inch and smaller. So, the amount of sensors, I'll use that quotation mark, the amount of sensors that are out in your distribution network listening for the acoustic sound on service lines and mains is in the thousands, right?

And it depends on how large your utility is. So, you have really good coverage, 24 seven, 365 days a year for 20 years on your distribution network. So, you get really good coverage there. The meters, the software gives you the ability to determine in a pretty close proximity where that potential leak is.

And then I think that leak detection of hydrants may be even a supplement to that technology. You know, add that additional information to the mix and you have a really good distribution leak detection solution for yourself. 

But because of the density and the volume of the meters that are out there, the Kamstrup meters that are out there listening, I feel that's a really strong solution for you. Our acoustics are listening through the water column.

So, we are actually listening into the service lines and the mains to be able to identify those acoustics. So it is a really strong solution.

Mike Skoda:

Yeah, yeah, perfect. Joe makes a lot of sense. Let's see in from James here. “What remote disconnect capabilities do you have?”

Joe Ball:

So, we don't have a specific remote disconnect capability ourselves, but we have the ability to partner with other remote disconnect companies that are out there. We offer a shorter lay length meter so we could deploy alongside of our meter some of the remote disconnect solutions that are out there in the market today.

Mike Skoda:

Gotcha, thanks Joe. Let's see, coming in from Jesus, “can you talk more about our head and application? Do you offer a head and application analytics, et cetera?”

Joe Ball:

Yes, we do. We offer the head-end application for our AMI solution. It's called Reedy Manager. That Reedy Manager application does everything that a head -end application would do. It manages all the meters that are out in your field and the collectors that are out in your field, the configuration.

It also pulls that data in and gives you the ability to do some reporting on that data to be able to really leverage that data to run your business. We also have the ability to integrate, as I mentioned a little earlier, with best-in-class customer portals that are out there so you can not only use the data internally, but then you can also use that to engage with your customers as well.

Mike Skoda:

All right, good stuff. Up next, so from, I believe, Karan, Karan. “So if the utility wants only cellular, do you have a cellular only solution?”

Joe Ball:

We absolutely can use cellular owning only. As I mentioned, I think that there's a benefit of using both, but our system is capable of using just one or the other, just RF or just cellular. So if a customer wanted a full cellular solution, we can accommodate that as well.

Mike Skoda:

Gotcha. So I think this one also from Karan is a follow up from something you mentioned earlier. “The leak detection feature is to identify leaks on behind the meter and the distribution line is kind of what they're asking and also how far can it listen.”

Joe Ball:

Yeah, so the main strength of what we call ALD, acoustic leak detection, in our meters, that's embedded in our meters, is a distribution leak detection solution. So, it listens out into the service lines in the mains and pulls that data back into our leak detector software to be able to analyze acoustic history that's out there and identify where there could be potential leaks in the distribution network.

We can also tell based upon data and alarms at our meter for continuous flow and burst or excessive flow at the customer side as well. But it is a distribution leak detection solution. And the answer to your question on distance really depends on pipe material, to be honest.

So, depending on whether you have some form of metal or PVC out there, you have the distance fluctuates, right? But again, the beauty of our solution is that all meters, one inch and below, have this acoustic leak detection.

So, you have that density of all those meters in your system to be able to help. I won't say triangulate or pinpoint, but it certainly gives you an area within feet where you would take your listening equipment out to go identify where that leak is before you start digging.

Mike Skoda:

Awesome. Yeah. Thanks, Joe. Let's see another one here. Is it is it a regulatory requirement for utilities to have the 20 year battery life?

Joe Ball:

It's not a regulatory requirement, it is a marker requirement. So we see a lot here in North America over the years that the, you know, an older guy like me, as you can see at my gray beard, I've been around where there was a battery requirement that was less than 20 years at one point, but it's moved to 20 years and most utilities will require in their request for proposal documents or in their SPAC that they have 20 -year battery left.

Mike Skoda:

All right, perfect. I'll let Joe take a drink here real quick and just remind you guys, please submit more questions. Any we don't get to, I'm gonna pass along to the team. And then if you need to reach out, contact info is on the right side.

Quick link on the bottom right to connect on the Water Online site. And then again, left side's where you ask your questions. And so let's get into another one. How much data is stored with the auto backfill capabilities?

Joe Ball:

So, we have the ability to store in the cellular meter up to 30 days for the auto backfill capabilities. So, it'll keep trying, it'll keep trying to report that information up to 30 days.

Mike Skoda:

Gotcha. Okay. I've got one here from Carl. He's asking, could you talk about some locations, maybe like larger cities where you have had successful installations?

Joe Ball:

Carl, to be honest, I could come back and give you some more information about that. We'll take that question on. A lot of our larger deployments are in Europe from the technology that we've been deploying over the last couple of years there.

Most of the deployments that we've done here in North America over the last year and a half have been pilot deployments for us, so we've been deploying the cellular technology at some existing customers in a hybrid type of application. So, we can get you some more information on that one.

Mike Skoda:

Beautiful, thanks Joe. Let's see, I'm gonna look through this list here. We've got quite a few. Do your meters support pressure metering shutoff valve?

Joe Ball:

So, we do not have pressure monitoring in our meters right now. And then from a remote shutoff valve, yes, we do support partner solutions with a remote shutoff valve. I mentioned that a little bit earlier.

We have a shorter lay length meter that gives you the ability to deploy our residential meters with a remote shutoff valve next to it that equates to the normal lay length.

Mike Skoda:

Gotcha, perfect. And then someone was asking, is there a coverage map for these cellular meters?

Joe Ball:

There is, we leverage the cellular maps that AT &T provides and they're not as good as say what a propagation study would be, including cellular nerve, but they can get real granular. We actually recommend to our distributors and even some of our sales team when they're working with the customer to really go in and you could leverage that particular functionality with AT &T and be able to drill down really close to see what that coverage looks like. It's actually a pretty nice tool that comes directly from AT &T.

Mike Skoda:

All right. Yeah. Awesome. I've got another one here from Joseph asking does Kamstrup have a total managed solution that, you know, includes like legal arming health checks, backflow, et cetera. And also a customer portal application.

Joe Ball:

So, we do have the ability to, so in some of those particular things, and I'm going to scroll down because I think I can see that question, total amount of service, so leak alarming, absolutely we have leak alarming.

We can do amount of service with health checks on the actual collectors that are out there. Backflow from a backflow perspective, our meters have alarms for customer side leaks and then also some reverse flow that's there.

So, depending on what level of total managed service you're talking about, we could certainly get Joseph more information. So, I could see that question there. And then his last question about the customer portal, we don't have a customer portal ourselves, but we do partner with some of the best-in-class customer portals that are out there to be able to move our data into those software applications for you to use with your customers.

Mike Skoda:

Perfect, yeah, Joe, coming in from Thomas, “have you guys noticed any issues with, you know, hot temperatures, like the hot Southern weather, affecting the lifespan of the batteries?”

Joe Ball:

So, Thomas, it definitely has a factor, right? Higher temperatures, even lower temperatures affect battery discharge just in general, but that's something that our development teams use when they're determining the battery size to use and doing that calculation.

So, we do a bunch of different things with battery life. We've got over 30 years of experience with ultrasonic metering. So we've seen a lot of the way the meters function out in the field. So yes, we take that into account.

We take it into account temperature, both high and low when we're thinking about battery life.

Mike Skoda:

Okay, yeah, perfect. Let's see. So how about scalability? How scalable are Kamstrup’s AMI solutions to accommodate changes in you know, utility infrastructure or demand?

Joe Ball:

Yeah, good question. So that's the great thing about that flexibility, right? So depending on where that expansion is in your geographic territory, whether you're taking on a neighboring town or a neighboring system and get a fully deployed solution out there, or you just have the typical growth that you would have in your area as you start to expand and you get further out from a town area or further rural applications,

It gives you the ability to choose. You have the ability to pretty easily deploy cellular in those areas. If cellular is not an option in that particular area, then you can deploy a collector for the RF network and be able to expand that RF network.

So again, this is why we feel a hybrid application is great because you could use either technology to help support the expansion and the growth that you have.

Mike Skoda:

Perfect, yeah, thanks Joe. Let's see, definitely got a few more here. From David, does the RF solution have the capability to read via AMR?

Joe Ball:

It does, yes. So our RF solution has the ability to start in AMR mode and actually be transitioned to an AMI mode. And then if there happens to be some network issues to where you can't get the read out of that meter, you can go ahead and read those meters in AMR mode as what we call a contingency read or a backup read.

Mike Skoda”

Perfect. Let's see from Blake, “how granular does your cellular meter usage data go?”

Joe Ball:

Great, great question there. So we do have the capabilities to set the interval size for two different intervals on those particular meters. You could set the, most of our residential meter, all of our meters have one hour interval setting and that's our default.

But with our larger meters, one and a half inch and larger, we have the ability to go to what we call a data driven mode which is 15 minute intervals. This mode is to be used for data analytics. So, you have the ability to temporarily set that meter to collect in 15 minute intervals to be able to pull that data back and do some analysis around usage and consumption at that particular meter.

Mike Skoda:

Gotcha, perfect. Let's see, what else do I have here? Oh, someone did ask if this will be available on demand. It will be. Usually within a day, often less than that. Usually, you know, five, six hours even, it's up.

You can just use the same link that you used today. It'll give you direct access to it, but we'll also send out an email in about 24 or 48 hours with a follow -up with a link to it. So let's see. Hector is asking, could you talk about which water meter he said, which is the water meter that would pair well for the hydraulic district measurement?

Joe Ball:

So, I think, you know, so a larger meter for a district meeting application Hector is what I'm assuming you mean. And so we have a full right now we have a our cellular solution goes from five eighths meters up to four inch meters.

So that's limited right there where we have a cellular opportunity coming for our 4 ,200 line, which is six inch and six inch to 12 inch. But we don't, those are not generally available right now.

So cellular is available for five eighths inch variance up to up to three inch. I'm sorry, up to four inch. Those are the capabilities here. So we don't necessarily have a cellular version of say a district meter that you would use if you needed something larger than four inch we do have that in our RF variant where we have a full portfolio that goes from five eighth variance all the ways up to 12 inch. And depending on the, your distribution network, you may be able to use one of our larger sizes in our 4,200 portfolio.

Mike Skoda:

Perfect, thanks Joe. Let's see, do you have an AMI module only that can integrate with other vendor encoders?

Joe Ball:

We do, we don't use them a lot, but we do have our MTU, our meter transmission unit that we can connect to third -party meters and be able to pull the consumption data back through that MTU through our RF network.

Mike Skoda:

Gotcha, perfect, thanks Joe. Let's see, just filtering through a couple here. Up next from Eric, how does the radio go from AMI to AMR if there are network issues?

Joe Ball:

It's an automatic feature that will do that. It'll give you the ability to collect that in AMR mode. So it's not something that you have to reconfigure the meter or anything, it's an automatic functionality that gives you the ability to collect in AMR mode.

You will need what we call our converter, which is one of the field tools that, that and our field application to be able to make that collection. But you can certainly do that and it happens automatically.

Mike Skoda:

Gotcha. And then I just wanted to point out another quick reminder. The slide on your screen right now, if you did want to fall up on any of this stuff and you're going to be at ACE, Kamstrup is going to be there, 2362.

Like Joe mentioned, a ton of people from their team are going to be there with some really in -depth knowledge that you can definitely reach out. And if you're there, you can get some great answers to any more questions you might have as well.

Let's see, I've got at least time for one more we can add in here. So for cellular communication, does the meter endpoint require the LTE -M or can they use multiple cellular protocols?

Joe Ball:

Our cellular meter uses the MBIO -T cellular communication, so not the CAD -M1, but the MBIO -T. We made a decision on that because of the ability to have better battery consumption management and range for that matter from an MBIO -T perspective.

Plus, we have a lot of experience using that cellular technology outside of the US and North America. For more information on MBIO -T, visit MBIO -T .com

Mike Skoda:

Perfect. And Joe, I think we're actually going to wrap up here. Got through a ton of questions. Joe, I appreciate you being here. This was great. Audience members, if you did have some more questions, submit them now.

I'm going to pass them along to Joe and the team to follow up with as well. They'll get in touch with you with answers to everything. And then again, make sure to visit them at ACE if you're going to be there.

Going to be a lot of great people there to talk to and ask some great questions. And so with that, Joe, if you had any closing thoughts.

Joe Ball:

I just wanted to say one thing, you know, if you can't wait for ACE, I switched the slide here so you could go ahead and visit KamstrupSolutions.com and there's a bunch of information about our flexible communications of cellular meters.

But like I said, I'd encourage everyone, if you're in Anaheim, stop by the booth. There's the people that are a lot smarter than me that could help answer your questions and kind of show you the technology.

But basically, I just want to say thanks everyone for attending and for listening. I appreciate it. I appreciate all the questions. And thanks, Mike. Yeah.

Mike Skoda:

Thanks everyone, have a great rest of your day. We'll see you next time. Bye everybody. Bye. Thank you.

Joe Ball:

Thank you.