High-tech water billing rolled out to a bumpy start — to put it charitably — when the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority began installing new meter equipment.
Customers soon complained of wildly inaccurate bills. PWSA brought in extra workers as it tackled issues with software, electronic data systems and meters themselves. The authority even faced a lawsuit over the billing problems.
About four years later, PWSA pledges that those woes are in the past. By mid-December, its advanced meter-interface units — now a few years old — should start triggering near-immediate water usage alerts for customers who want that data, authority officials said last week.
The utility doesn’t plan to charge extra for the service, which the interface units were designed to provide all along. Alerts will be available by text message or email, said Julie Quigley, administration director at the authority. A sign-up link should appear at www.pgh2o.com when an official introduction kicks off, likely within a few weeks.
“It’s so good that it’s silly to pass up,” Ms. Quigley said. “I’d just like to get the word out that this will help you reduce your household costs — and it’s completely free.”
Participating customers will receive the automated alerts when their usage eclipses thresholds that they set online in advance, according to PWSA. The system will hinge on hourly updates from the interface units, which rely on wireless technology to relay readings from customers’ water meters. A radio frequency carries the data to receivers affixed to water towers.
Ms. Quigley understands the initial implementation of the interface units wasn’t phased in correctly, although she didn’t work for PWSA at the time, she said. The authority is “extremely confident in the data that we’re gathering from these” devices, she said, after it bolstered billing, metering and related functions.
“Julie has come in and stabilized our whole customer-service and billing operation,” PWSA spokesman Will Pickering said.
The authority announced Ms. Quigley’s hiring in October 2017.
Mr. Pickering’s is among some 150 customer accounts that have piloted the usage alerts since Nov. 1. As of early last week, Ms. Quigley said she had not received any complaints from the pilot effort.
Once the service becomes more widespread, she said, it should help many customers to monitor for household plumbing leaks or other unexpected increases in water use. Pittsburgh City Council urged the authority in 2016 to consider such an offering.
PWSA said around 98 percent of customers have the equipment that registers hourly water readings. The general idea, often known as “smart metering,” has gathered momentum across the utility industry in the past several years.
Duquesne Light started swapping older electric meters for newer, digital models in 2015, part of a metering infrastructure upgrade required of the power company under state legislation.
Still, the scope of smart metering among water utilities in Pennsylvania wasn’t immediately clear late last week, as a variety of utility-related offices and agencies closed for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Pennsylvania American Water Co., the largest investor-owned water utility in the state, doesn’t have a timeline for introducing such technology, spokeswoman Heather DuBose said via email. Pennsylvania American’s service area in the Pittsburgh region includes much of south Pittsburgh and the South Hills.
American Water, the parent company, is piloting “advanced meter infrastructure projects around the country,” Ms. DuBose said. Those efforts will let customers observe “their water usage data on a real-time basis through a web portal and set up alerts to be notified immediately if there's an issue or if they exceed a specific amount of usage.”
“We will notify our customers and the local media when we have plans to test or offer the technology locally,” she added.
Adam Smeltz: 412-263-2625, asmeltz@post-gazette.com, @asmeltz.
First Published: November 25, 2018, 10:41 p.m.
