Aclara, a provider of smart infrastructure solutions for electric, water and gas utilities, and Valor Water Analytics, a developer of advanced meters analytics for water utilities, announced the formation of a strategic alliance to help water utilities reduce non-revenue water losses by analyzing data collected by advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) systems.
Valor’s solutions specifically improve water utility operations by locating sources of unbilled water. These apparent water losses include billing irregularities, meter-read errors, meter tampering, meter inaccuracy, meter right-sizing and meter misclassifications.
Valor’s machine learning and artificial intelligence methodologies are especially useful in recovering hidden revenue by pinpointing broken meters that are not registering correctly. These are almost impossible to locate without trend-spotting analysis that differentiates between behavioral change and mechanical decay.
“The alliance between Aclara and Valor will allow utilities to make analytics an integral part of their AMI strategies for boosting revenues and reducing water losses,” said Allan Connolly, president and CEO of Aclara. “Our relationship with Valor also supports our goal to become the leading end-to-end provider of smart infrastructure solutions to utilities.”
Aclara plans to provide Valor analytics through the same graphical user interface they use to access their AMI system information. The tight integration between the AMI solution and the analytics software will allow utilities to identify and respond to problems quickly.
“By using analytics to identify apparent water losses, utilities will get more value out of the data collected through their AMI systems, providing actionable intelligence to drive revenue, operational efficiencies and customer satisfaction, while minimizing risks and increasing financial resilience,” said Christine Boyle, founder and CEO of Valor Water Analytics.
In addition to identifying apparent water losses, Valor’s analytics solutions can help utilities improve customer satisfaction by identifying customer usage patterns that might lead to non-payment, allowing utilities to develop proactive strategies to avoid cutoffs. For more information, read our blog post, “The Skinny on Curbing Apparent Water Loss.”
