Jeffrey Lipton

Water utilities are providers of life sustaining services that we all rely on. Yet, at least in the United States, water services are taken for granted by many people. Ironically, this is partly due to the tremendous success that water suppliers have had in providing safe and reliable services for so long. Very few people have ever had an experience of turning on their water tap and not receiving clean, safe drinking water. In addition to the general reliability of water services, people see water availability as a human right. We depend on it for drinking, cooking, and cleaning. The oceans, rivers, and streams overflow with water. Water falls from the sky. We are surrounded by water, and this apparent abundance and reliability gives the impression that it should be free, or at least very inexpensive.

[Read more…] about A Multi-Pronged Approach to Water Affordability

The idea of post-paid water services is a first world construct. In order to reliably collect payment for water services after the fact, utilities need to verify customer credit worthiness. This generally means that customers have a bank account, credit card, and a credit history. Steady employment, regular income, and a reliable history of paying bills on time are the general requirements to qualify for any type of service where you pay after the service has been rendered.

[Read more…] about Solving the Uncollectible Water Revenue Conundrum

The workforce in the water industry is aging. More importantly, fewer young people are entering the industry to take over jobs, creating a pending human resource gap to compound the financial resource challenges that many water suppliers currently face. The numbers are substantial. A 2010 report by the Water Research Foundation and the American Water Works Association found that up to 50% of senior utility managers would be eligible for retirement over the next 10 years, leaving a dearth of experienced managers at the helm. This is occurring just as the needs for digital transformation to a smart utility, with a new set of technology and innovation challenges, takes hold.

[Read more…] about Digital Transformation for an Aging Water Workforce

The water industry has seen gradual growth in the adoption of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and related data analytics solutions over the past decade, but that rate of growth has been modest at best. This is somewhat surprising given the well documented benefits of AMI including lower costs, revenue recovery, improved operational efficiency, and increased customer satisfaction. If AMI provides so many advantages to water suppliers and their customers, why isn’t every utility in the country clamoring to implement smart metering? What barriers are discouraging more rapid technology adoption and how, as an industry, do we support each other to overcome these challenges to unlock the power of water data?

[Read more…] about Crossing the Digital Water Divide

With the end of the decade quickly approaching, the team at SET is putting on our magic goggles to prognosticate some likely trends in digital water for the next year and beyond. 2020 is not only the dawn of a new decade, but it’s also witness to the fruition of a number of fascinating developments over the past few years that are likely to gain further traction in the year ahead. While some things in the water industry don’t change quickly, including the pace of change, there are trends that are likely to support the ongoing shift toward increased digitization of water utility management. Without further ado, here are our top 5 forecasts for the year ahead:

[Read more…] about Top 5 Water Technology Predictions SET for 2020

Water suppliers regularly look to develop projects that are dependent on third party vendors. A good example of this is the deployment of Advanced Metering Infrastructure. In these cases, utility managers often look to reduce complexity and improve accountability by choosing a single provider as the primary point of contact for the project. The idea behind this approach is that a prime contractor will be responsible for delivering the entire project, and will outsource or subcontract whatever elements of the project are not within that vendor’s area of domain expertise.

[Read more…] about Reframing Water Utility Project Management

Many water utilities continue to evaluate the costs and benefits of investing in smart metering to reduce operational costs and help recover revenue from water losses. Smart metering can also provide customers with more granular consumption data to help them protect their property from water damage and better manage their water expenses.

While water suppliers continue to build business cases to justify the typically large capital expenditures necessary to deploy a system wide smart metering platform, a potentially bigger question has emerged relating to the type of communication technology the utility should select.

[Read more…] about Smart Water Networks and the Future of AMI

When speaking with anyone who works for a water utility their priorities quickly become apparent. Water quality and reliability, intractably related to each other, form the core mission of any water utility. Without maintaining water quality and safety, customers may become sick or worse. Water suppliers in the United States take great pride in the reliability of service that they have provided for more than a century. No other country in the world has delivered such an extended period of reliability with 24×7 on demand water services. There are few people that live in the U.S. that can recount EVER turning on the tap and not receiving safe, life nourishing drinking water.

[Read more…] about Meter-to-Cash: Turning Water Into Dollars