Case Studies

Video Testimonials

Water

  • Town of Burlington - Massachusetts
    The Town of Burlington’s Department of Public Works services approximately 8,500 water accounts, including 6,800 residential, 880 commercial, 750 "second meter" (irrigation), and 50 municipal customers. According to John G. Sanchez, DPW Superintendent, the water division had already started looking to recapture lost revenue when he joined the department nearly five years ago. "They’d discussed the need for an automatic meter reading system," Sanchez said. "My first year with the town, we produced 1.2 billion gallons of water but billed for only 929 million."
  • Charleston Water System - Charleston, South Carolina
    In 1879, the Charleston Water Works Company was founded to provide the City of Charleston, South Carolina water from a system of deep artesian wells. By 1903, that supply was inadequate, so the Charleston Light and Water Company was formed, with a reservoir built at Goose Creek and a pumping station in nearby Hanahan. In 1917, what is now Charleston Water System was created when the City bought the water system assets. Today, the utility serves more than 107,000 "Lowcountry" water customers over an area that includes the downtown/Peninsula, North Charleston, Goose Creek, Johns Island, James Island, West Ashley, and Daniel Island.
  • City of Dubuque, Iowa
    Unlike much of the rest of Iowa, the ninth-largest city in the state has varied topography – rolling hills, valleys, and steep bluffs that overlook the Mississippi River. Serving a population of 57,637 with approximately 22,500 water meters (22,386 residential, 114 commercial and industrial), the City of Dubuque Water Department had last undergone a system-wide changeout during the early 1980s. In its aging system, more than 40 percent of its meters were 25 years old or older; the technology to read these meters was nearly as outdated. The City contracted with the local natural gas utility to send out meter readers to walk routes, collecting data with a blend of old pulse generator remotes and touchpads.
  • City of Enid, Oklahoma
    Located in northwestern Oklahoma, the City of Enid shares the wide open, flat spaces with wheat fields and oil wells. Founded during the famous Land Rush of 1893, the “Queen Wheat City” began an oil boom in 1910. Now also the home of Vance Air Force Base and an overall population of nearly 50,000 people, the City serves 20,500 water service connections – 17,500 residential and 3,000 commercial and industrial (C&I) accounts. Even in the best of times, the water meter system was a challenge to maintain; but especially during the 1990s with an oil bust and drop in population, the resources for regular maintenance were scarce.
  • City of Hillsboro - Hillsboro, Oregon
    When the town of Hillsboro, Oregon was incorporated in 1876, the residents had to carry water in buckets from local wells and streams. By the time Hillsboro formed its own utilities commission in 1940, the expanding city had switched from a wooden pipe carrying water from Sain Creek to a steel line from the Tualatin River. Today the area continues to grow, due in large part to its location in the heart of the West Coast’s “Silicon Forest.” While this has helped insulate local communities against the effects of the economic recession, the manufacturing of computer chips and solar panels, along with the expanding population, require increasing amounts of water to meet the community’s needs. The City has approximately 2,500 commercial and industrial (C&I) users with the remainder of the City’s 25,000 service accounts consisting of residential accounts.
  • North Dallas Water Authority - Dallas County, Alabama
    Dallas County, Alabama was created by the state territorial legislature on February 9, 1818, and named in honor of former U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Dallas. Located within the heart of the fertile-soiled Black Belt region in the west-central part of the state, the county encompasses 993 square miles. North of historic Selma, Dallas County is largely rural; spread out around the City of Valley Grande are smaller, unincorporated communities such as Plantersville and Summerfield. Serving this portion of the county is the North Dallas Water Authority (Authority).
  • City Of Gulf Shores-Gulf Shores, Alabama
    Alabama has a limited amount of coastline, but what it has is beautiful – soft, sugarwhite sands, palm trees gently swaying in the warm Gulf breezes, and emerald waters lapping the beaches. The main artery to this semi-tropical paradise runs through the City of Gulf Shores, located on the Gulf of Mexico off the eastern side of Mobile Bay in Baldwin County, Alabama.
  • City Of Middletown, Pennsylvania
    Located eight miles south of Harrisburg along the scenic Susquehanna River, the Borough of Middletown, Pennsylvania is the oldest town in Dauphin County, laid out thirty years before the founding of the state capital. Providing for Middletown’s water and sewerage needs since 1957, the Borough’s Utility Operations and Maintenance Department now serves a population of 9,254, with 2,592 residential, 86 commercial, and 27 industrial accounts. In addition, the utility serves about 1,700 people in a couple of neighboring communities through the use of two bulk meters.
  • City Of Palatka, Florida
    Surrounded by live oaks, tall pines, and its famous azaleas, the City of Palatka is the seat of Putnam County in northeast Florida. Encompassing nearly 7.5 square miles along the St. Johns River, about a half-hour from the beaches on the state’s east coast, the city supports a population of 11,000.
  • Town of Pellham, Ontario
    Billing and customer service functions are reliant on the accuracy of meter reading data. The Town’s issues stemmed from an aging meter population which consisted of a mix of outdated technologies and failing meters. Meter reading errors and process inefficiencies related to old direct read and pulser-based technologies resulted in inaccurate data, an abundance of estimated bills, customer billing disputes, billing adjustments, and large sums of money being written-off.
  • City Of Rosenberg-Rosenberg, Texas
    Located in Fort Bend County just 20 miles southwest of Houston, the City of Rosenberg, Texas is home to a population of nearly 32,000. Developed in the 1870s and 1880s as the junction point of the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific’s Victoria Division railroads, Rosenberg and its surrounding Brazos River Valley attracted many from across the country with fertile land for growing cotton and fruit orchards. The city was officially incorporated in 1902, with its public utilities established a few years thereafter. As of September 2010, the water and wastewater department serves 7,076 single residential; 1,291 Industrial, Commercial, and Institutional (ICI); and 233 irrigation accounts.
  • City of Tifton, Georgia
    The City of Tifton, Georgia sits in the heart of the southern part of the state, about two hours south of Atlanta on I-75. While some might think that life moves at a slower, easier pace there, that’s certainly not the case for Russ Dorman, the Utilities Director for Tift County’s Water and Wastewater Department as well as for the City of Tifton’s Natural Gas Department – or as they’re known together, Tifton Utilities. Having joined the utility in August 2000, Dorman took on his current position in September 2005, around the same time that the water and gas services were consolidated. For several years, he has dealt with the daily challenges of serving 11,800 water customers (about 80 percent of the total in Tift County), 7,500 sewer customers, and 2,400 gas customers.
  • East Orange, NJ Water Commission
    Using the new ARB® Mobile TM System, the East Orange Water Commission has experienced several notable changes.  First, all the reads are captured by a single reader in less than 12 hours, with ample time to gather rare re-reads.  The commission now routinely realizes a reading success rate above 99 percent, instead of estimating half its reads.
  • Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority
    Comprising a customer base of 46,000 accounts spread across a span of 130 miles, the Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority (FKAA) sought a more flexible, more efficient way to capture meter readings from the length of the 1,700-island chain.  The solution to the challenge required a hybrid AMR/AMI system that effectively
    combined handheld, mobile, and fixed network data collection. That key was
    Neptune Technology Group.
  • Gibson County Utility District- Gibson County, Tennessee
    According to Finance Manager Allyson Horner, in looking at what an AMR system could do, the utility was particularly interested in how it could save time, money, and labor by allowing current employees to multi-task. “When we did the cost analysis on hiring an extra meter reader, and on the return on investment, it was going to be less costly over time [to move to AMR]. We could end up with a six-year payback if we went with the AMR program – versus having an additional employee, when all that they could do was read meters.”
  • Greater Cincinnati Water Works-Cincinnati, Ohio
    In 2001, when the Greater Cincinnati Water Works began exploring Automated Meter Reading (AMR) technology, its 180 employees, including 24 meter readers, struggled to maintain an 85 percent meter reading success rate (with occasional rates as low as 40 percent in urban areas). Having moved from a pencil-and-paperbased system only six years before, the GCWW was ready to close the technology gap and more efficiently serve its more than one million customers.
  • Town Of Vulcan-Alberta, Canada
    In the summer of 2009 the Town of Vulcan issued a Request for Tender for the replacement of its aging meter population. The town understood the need to replace its aging meter population to regain the revenue it was losing due to the older meters’ inaccuracies. As well, the town was struggling with the many challenges of having to manually read meters – whether reading the outdoor visual remote or walking up to houses to read the meter through the touchpad receptacle. Vulcan knew that significant meter reading efficiencies can be realized by upgrading to a radio frequency automatic meter reading (RF AMR) technology.
  • White City Water Improvement District-Sandy, Utah
    Three months of the year, Sandy, Utah is snowy Utah. Located in the shadow of the mountains, this small community is home to the White City Water Improvement District, a utility serving approximately 4,100 connections.
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Gas

  • Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
    On August 29, 2005, everything changed. Fifty miles west of Bay St. Louis, the city of New Orleans is more closely associated with the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. But while the damage in New Orleans was extensive, its neighboring cities along the Mississippi gulf coast (Waveland, Pass Christian, and Bay St. Louis, among others) were almost completely and, quite literally, wiped off the map.
  • Midwest Gas-Washington, Indiana
    After Neptune’s entry into the gas market, a number of utilities in the Southeast, Midwest, and in Texas adopted Neptune’s ARB® Utility Management Systems TM  . These utilities achieved increased range, improved meter reading success rates, and reduced meter reading times with the implementation of Neptune’s R900G gas AMR endpoints – a critical component of Neptune ARB Utility Management Systems.
  • Gibson County Utility District, Tennessee
    Anxious to implement this new technology, GCUD decided to retrofit its complete system of 12,000 natural gas meters and 1,200 propane meters within a 12-month time frame. Completion of the project is anticipated for August 2008. According to General Manager Pat Riley, “The key to this aggressive schedule is good cooperation and planning among all of the players.”
  • Trussville Utilities - Trussville, Alabama
    In 2006, the Trussville Utilities Board was investigating better options for reading its roughly 11,000 water meters and 22,000 gas meters. The six-person crew of full-time meter readers (along with a seventh to perform rereads as needed) was struggling to keep up with a five-days-a-week pace collecting data and inputting it manually. Chief Financial Officer Mike Strength wanted to increase efficiencies using automatic meter reading (AMR) – but only if he could have a system that worked with both the water side and the gas side of his operations.
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Electric

  • Cinergy Corporation
    Over a nine month period, they reduced the umber of meter routes by 14% eliminating 16 full time equivalent meter reading positions through attrition and resulting in an annual savings of $886,000 per year.
  • Fountain, Colorado
    Neptune's meter reading software allows Fountain to manage its handheld and mobile electric and water meter readings with a single software platform.
  • Kentucky Utilities, Inc.
    The $80,000 investment in ARCS ten years ago has provided Kentucky Utilities with the management reporting and continuous route optimization capability to lower its meter reading expense over $1.5 million per year and increase revenues $680,000 per year while more than doubling the number of meters being read.

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