Established in 1990 by the Florida Land and Water Adjudicatory Commission, St. Lucie, Florida West Services District is a 4,600-acre community development district that provides safe drinking water and exceptional service to the residents and businesses it serves.
The district is actively deploying Kamstrup flowIQ® 2200 meters – the industry’s first and only ultrasonic meter with embedded acoustic leak detection to identify leaks in the distribution system. The advanced meter provides valuablehttps://www.kamstrup.com/en-US insights into water consumption patterns – enabling utilities to easily understand usage trends, peak demand periods, and customer behavior.
“Prior to deploying Kamstrup metrology, we had residents experiencing incorrect water bills at 90,000 – 100,000 gallons per month,” said Joshua Miller, utilities director at St. Lucie West Services District. “That level of bad meter reading and inaccurate water bills was not acceptable.”
The utility was also experiencing a meter failure rate of around 10 percent with their prior meter vendor. St. Lucie West conducted a 15-month study on smart meters across multiple meter manufacturers, to identify the right technology that would serve the district in the long term – with the goal of doing a total system replacement.
“The first question I ask any manufacturer is what their meter fail rate is,” said Miller. “I can tell you that with Kamstrup’s ultrasonic meters, we’ve had a zero percent fail rate. Their quality is so good, Kamstrup doesn’t need a meter replacement program.”
“We’re delighted to provide St. Lucie a quality water metering and AMI solution that truly helps them capture more revenue and deliver accurate billing to its residents,” said Bruce Bharat, vice president and country manager at Kamstrup North America. “Manufacturing innovative, high-quality, and reliable meters is something we take seriously at Kamstrup. Our expanded manufacturing facility in Georgia is truly state-of-the-art and the best in the industry.”
“The Kamstrup solution enables us to achieve outstanding read rates across our water meters,” concludes Miller. “Ironically, I was against acoustic leak detection technology. However, Kamstrup’s flowIQ 2200 meters with embedded acoustic leak detection enables our utility to address unaccounted water loss. It’s a win-win for the utility and our community.”
