IEEE Spectrum June, 2010 - 68

3. tiny test beds

singapore

de salination

malta

of leak: commercial losses that stem
from meters that aren't sensitive enough
to measure very low water flow.
Over the next three years IBM will
outfit the old water meters with new
data-collection modules. The modules convert the analog pulses to digital signals, which are then radioed to
devices called concentrators that collect data from meters located in a particular zone and transmit that data in
batches to Water Services. By comparing the amount of water being read by
individual meters with the amount of
water flowing into each zone, the utility
will discover discrepancies that will help
them track down slow leaks.
"It's a powerful tool to basically drill
down and go to the key problem areas,"
says Stephen Galea St. John, Water
Services' chief officer of operations. "It's
a question of low-lying fruit."
I t ' l l ta k e a f e w y e a r s t o p l u c k

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Enemalta was losing up to 14 percent of its
electricity to theft. More recent estimates
show total commercial losses of 8 percent,
with theft being a major factor.
As Anthony Gauci, project manager
for automated metering at Enemalta,
explains over the whine of a drill during
an installation, electricity thieves are an
enterprising lot, and they love the old
electromechanical meters. Popular tampering methods include drilling a hole in
the meter cover and inserting an object

to stop the unit-counting disk from rotating; turning the meter at an angle so that
the disk touches the magnet inside the
meter and stops rotating; opening the
link between the voltage and current
coils so the meter registers no consumption; and splicing in a wire to bypass the
meter completely and connect the power
directly to the main switch of the thief's
home or business.
With curious residents looking on,
Enemalta technician Joseph Giuliano
spectrum.ieee.org

Joshua RoMeRo (3)

that fruit. The five-year project began in
2009 and involves more than 100 IBM
personnel working alongside about twice
as many employees from the utilities.
Dozens of programmers, engineers,
and project managers click away on
ThinkPads in a situation room at Water
Services' headquarters. Here they're
knitting together the business systems
that will ingest, analyze, and act upon
the hundreds of thousands of data points
that the water and electric meters will
generate each day. In some instances,
programmers are building things from
scratch, such as an advanced meter
management system, which both Water
Services and Enemalta will use. IBM is
also replacing the billing system the two
utilities have long shared with a new one
from the German firm SAP. Actual consumption and billing data will be available to customers via a new Web portal
that accepts online payments and helps
customers understand their own consumption patterns.
Just as Water Services' newly outfitted
meters will help minimize commercial
losses, the electric smart meters made by
Enel, of Italy, are the first line of defense
against electricity theft. Four years ago
government officials estimated that

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum June, 2010