Concern about ageing business water meters in Britain

British business water services provider Wave has called for closer attention to issues surrounding ageing water meters.

The call follows the completion of ‘Project No Flow’ undertaken with the data collection provider Occutrace on the lifespan of non-household water meters, which found that the root cause of many non-consuming meters is the meter having surpassed its operational age and increasingly likely to fail.

In the project, supply point IDs with three or more meter reads showing no consumption were investigated, taken from a random sample of 2,000 supply point IDs.

Of these 771 meters identified as zero-consuming, almost two-thirds were found to be degraded to the extent of non-functionality.

Have you read?
Open water data platform launched in Britain
How big data analytics are enabling sustainability for water utilities

“Project No Flow has sought to establish hard facts and real-world evidence about meters that are not recording consumption to help the market understand the volume of potential zero consuming meters out there,” commented Claire Stanness, Metering Operations Manager at Wave and the project lead’.

“This first of its kind project has highlighted the issues that come with meters that are not recording consumption, issues that affect everyone.”

Along with the customers, who have to face the potential repercussions of inaccurate billing, retailers and wholesalers are also impacted with retailers having to correct and revise the bills and wholesalers seeing the impact inaccurate metering can have on the settlement process.

The study also found that many wholesalers do not have proactive replacement programmes in place for non-household meters, which would help to identify zero consuming meters and resolve the related issues sooner and thereby support the retailers in delivering reliable meter reads to their customers.

With accurate reads also comes the opportunity to identify any potential inefficiencies or cost savings for customers.

Wave suggests that to solve this issue a highly collaborative approach is needed, from the non-household water market operator MOSL, the regulator Ofwat, retailers, wholesalers, and their service providers, all working together towards a common goal of accurate and timely meter reads.

Wave also questions whether in the case of some properties being genuinely zero consuming because they were a flat above the shop or a secondary supply for the business, those meters should still be in the market or be disconnected.

The project report also suggests some potential areas that could form the basis for future metering committee or industry projects aimed at addressing issues inherent within the meter condition assessment space.

These include the introduction of a meter asset management programme and the replacement of broken meters with smart metering technology.

Specific market operational data quality weaknesses also could be tackled and new measures introduced for retailers identifying zero consuming assets.

At the outset of the project, MOSL data indicated that over 147,600 non-household water meters – approximately 11% – affecting over 113,270 occupied business premises across England were showing zero consumption.