Attention to Utility Company: When your meter data is not reliable

In some utility company, the meter information stored in billing system is not reliable. This situation could happen when utility company pays too much attention of customer ID or service ID or property ID or other ID to locate and identify the service. It means that when doing meter reading, the readers tends to look for those IDs instead of meter information. If your company is guilty of doing this activity, try to look on how many anomalies or exception related to meter reading. Either, the consumption is too high, too low, or considered as many meter turn overs. If the statistics show that the number of anomalies related to meter reading is high, most probably your utility company has no meter information updated in billing system.

One action to correct the meter information is by doing data gathering to obtain updated meter information. To make it worst is that only readers know how to locate the property based on ID. And most of the time, you will not want to allocate your readers to do data gathering that could take time as compared to normal reading. This can sacrifice the billing period that your company has set. Not to mention if the house is locked and the reader needs to wait.

One solution is to use other resources as surveyors and they will do sweeping the whole area. In order to make the sweeping efficient and they could link all the meter info to correct customer ID or other ID, a preliminary campaign should be done. A reader when doing normal reading should put sticker near the meter info and write related customer ID or whatever ID that the company wants to relate to. This way, the surveyor could link all the meter info gathered to the ID used in billing system.

Train the surveyor effectively so that the method of sweeping is done correctly and surveyor know the meter information to gather.

Take note on meter exchange done during the data gathering period. All meter exchange activities should be monitored and integrated with data gathering data to make sure that the data is always updated.

Does your meter readers know meter model and brand?

Recently, I was sending the meter readers to the field to obtain some of the meter brands and model in customers' properties. To my surprise, they returned with different lists on the same area. Even though meter readers always going to the field to read meters, it is NOT necessarily mean that they know the meter brand and models. Why?

1. When they read the meters, they only read the meter number and meter reading. They never care about the brand and models. Only the technicians observe meter brand and model because the need to make a field report after installing or exchanging meters.

2. Even if they see something in meters, they do not know whether it is brand, model, country of manufactures. Especially when your readers do not speak English. It will be difficult when they see S.P.A. Is it a brand or a model? When they see EGYPT, is it a brand, model, or country of manufactures? Some meter brands uses country as the brand. To make the situation worst, some meter manufactures do not put the brand in the meter. They only put type. One example is SUNER meter brand. They only put TPD2 in the meter, which is the type of meter, NOT the brand.

Thus, if you plan to gather information about meter brand and model in some area, try to send your technicians. If you need to deploy your readers because they know the area better, spend few days to train them about the available meter brand and models in your company.

Below are some meter brands that are commonly used in electric company:
AEG
AMAM
AUTOMETER
CHAMBERLAIN
DZG
FERRANTI
GANZ
GEC
IME
ISKRA
LANDIS & GYR
ME BWANDLERZAHLER
PAFAL
S.P.A.
SCHLUMBERGER
SIAME
SIEMENS
SUNER
TEMPX
TRIVICTOR

How to get accurate GPS

In implementing new Customer Information System for Utility companies, data gathering is often required to complete the data that are lacking. Identifying the data that will be gathered is important before going to the field. Additional data can be added since the cost of adding additional data during field campaign less.

GPS coordinate of properties or customers become an important data for the company. The main issue is how to get accurate GPS during field gathering. You can take a look at how the GPS work before designing any activities of GPS gathering in the field.

There are many ways to be considered to get GPS accuracy but from my experiences, the most important is to implement PDOP value in your application. PDOP as defined by GPS Glossary of UIOWA.EDU:

"PDOP: Percent Dilution of Position. Measure of the geometrical strength of the GPS satellite configuration. The amount of error in your position. PDOP less than 4 gives the best accuracy (under 1 meter). Between 4 and 8 gives acceptable accuracy. Greater than 8 gives poor accuracy."

In simple words, the PDOP is an indicator that tell you whether your GPS coordinate that you will take is having enough satellite, enough signal strengths, good satellite positions, etc. The lower the value of PDOP, the better.,

If you want to buy the GPS HHU, ask your vendor if they have PDOP module also installed. If you have bought the GPS HHU, try googling to find PDOP .dll or modules that you can integrate in your HHU applications.

Once you have this module installed, you can always remind your surveyors to get GPS coordinates while the PDOP values shown is as small as possible. This will give you another reminders like:
- avoid too close to tall buildings.
- avoid too close to tress or other obstacles.
- avoid too close to surveyors' body. Yes, your body can block the signal as well.
- and other strategies.

If you want to have better accuracy of GPS, you can even plan the time to do GPS data gathering. All satellites are rotating following their orbits, so you can estimate the best time in your area to have more satellites with more strength. This schedule of satellites are recorded by Almanac. To simplify the discussion, you can try the planning software by Trimble. It is free to try.

I will try to post most of my techniques based on my experiences in GPS gathering in my next post. I hope this can help you. Feel free to leave comments if you have questions or suggestions on how to improve the GPS accuracy during data gathering.

Steps to Data Gathering Activities

In order to achieve the target of Data Gathering activities, the following objectives and scope should be achieved:

1. Development of tools for field data gathering. First is Data Gathering Management System (DGMS) that will be stationed in each Data Gathering Center. The main purposes of DGMS are to plan, process data, and generate reports. Next is Data Gathering Mobile Application that will be used by surveyor to gather GPS position of the property and also additional data.

2. Development of Methodologies and Manuals. Methodology for each campaign should be defined. Refer to next section regarding various methodologies in DG campaign. The manual for each tool should be prepared for ease use by the surveyor.

3. Define Location of Data Gathering Center (DGC). DGC will be the center of all field data gathering activities where planning, upload data, validation, and report generation will take place with the use of Data Gathering Management System (DGMA). A location of DGC should be carefully selected to ensure productivity and effectiveness of DGC. Good access to readers and stable communication line should be considered.

4. Launch Data Gathering. Once the DGC has been setup up with proper logistics, data gathering can be started.

5. Monitor DGC performance. Reports generated by DGMS could be used to monitor the performance of DGC and its surveyors.

6. Produce quality data. Extensive validation should be performed for gathered data. This is to ensure that the final data that will be passed for conversion has good data quality to avoid future problems.

7. Provide data to Losses Reduction Project. During data gathering, possible fraud process might be detected due to sweeping activities. These services with fraud and direct connections should be transferred to Losses Reduction Project for further actions.