Agenda Packets - 2007/08/06 - Laserfiche WebLink

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 Is there a commitment from this company? Not currently, but this shouldn’t be too difficult to obtain regardless of continuing use and purchase of current use MXU’s. The City would still have to support all of the current meters and readers. The City can read its own meters, but due to safety and equipment capabilities, it currently would take two people two days to read all of the meters.  Should we look at a totally new system – one that uses the latest technology? To take advantage of some of the latest technology, the city would have to replace not only the readers, but also the meters, which don’t need to be replaced at this time, and probably won’t for another 15 years or more. The City of Blaine currently has a fixed network system, where the new radio devices send a signal to a centrally located tower once every hour. This system, which would be compatible with the Cities current meters, would provide instant data to Utility Billing. Some of capabilities of the system are to alert staff of possible inside the home leaks, so in a short period of time, the city can send those residents a notice of a possible leak and get it fixed before it leaks for a quarter. However, I have heard mixed results about this system. When it is installed outside the home, it appears to work well, but inside the home installations, seem to be a little troubling getting the signal out of the house and to the centrally located tower. The greatest advantage to the Fixed Network system is the capability of reading it directly from a central location, the Utility Billing Office. However, this advantage also comes with a cost of having someone to monitor that information, and then process the information all the way through the action steps of timely notification of problems to the customers. These fixed network systems are a little more, for the units that are in the homes, but the centrally located collectors range in price from $25,000 to $60,000 plus. All of the new radio read systems, and fixed network systems have a 20- year expected battery life, with a 10-year 100 percent replacement warranty. One available radio read system, has a leak detection capability built into it, where it will flag probable leaks, and is readable from outside the home. Another one of the radio read systems has the same capability, but has to be read from inside the home.