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By Christina Kelly

The buzz in the utility industry today is all about Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), but there are hundreds of utilities across the country?small to medium sized?that want a cost-effective and efficient mobile meter reading system.

For those sized utilities, the fancy bells and whistles, while nice to have, are not a necessity and hard to justify when price is the main factor. It is nice to test-drive the Porsche, but the reality is most of us will buy a reliable workhorse such as a Ford or Chevy.

For utilities using a handheld meter reading system for visual reads, or those who are using handhelds with RF capability who want to upgrade to a mobile AMR system, an inexpensive alternative is now available.

Itron’s newest mobile AMR offering, Mobile Collector Lite (MCL) answers the need in the utility market for flexible AMR solutions with a modest price tag. Mobile Collector Lite is an innovative combination of mobile and handheld AMR that can handle mixed drive-by and walk-by routes for the ultimate in operational flexibility. It is a significant offering for water, gas and electric utilities that want an affordable AMR system that will help achieve operational and business objectives, such as cost savings and working more efficiently.

When upgrading to a mobile AMR system, Mobile Collector Lite cuts the costs to read meters since it will take fewer meter readers to collect the data. In addition, MCL has advanced capabilities not served by handhelds such as collecting tamper data, simple demand reads and time-of-use reads.

“The key point is flexibility,” said Linda Blankenship, Itron senior product manager for Mobile Collector Lite. “With Mobile Collector Lite, you can use drive-by AMR or read manually or take the computer into the field for field investigations. And, you can do so for one-third of the cost.”

The FC200 is the Backbone

The rugged FC200 handheld computer is vital to Mobile Collector Lite’s flexibility. Utilizing the compact in-vehicle dock and external multi-channel radio, MCL collects consumption, tamper and time-of-use data from water, gas and electric endpoints in either “bubble-up” or “wake-up” mode.

A single Mobile Collector Lite can read up to 10,000 meters on a single route, compared to the few hundred meters than can be read on the average handheld walking route. Meter readers can collect reads while driving at normal city driving speeds or they can remove the FC200 from the in-vehicle dock to collect manual or probed meter reads while reading the normal cycle route. When using the FC200 equipped with optional radio (FC200R), meter readers can also program endpoints and collect data from hard-to-read meters. With the touch-screen display, meter readers can view missed reads and other performance statistics in real time on the route.

The external multi-channel, full-duplex radio collects reads on all channels simultaneously, providing the highest possible level of performance in any RF environment. Both the radio and handheld transfer easily between vehicles for flexible drive-by reads and allows meter readers to remove the FC200 handheld from the in-vehicle dock for complete walk-by functionality.

For utilities that don’t have AMR but are searching for a cost-effective method to automate, the Mobile Collector Lite will improve reading efficiency with less error, reduce the costs per read, improve customer service and allow the flexibility of a mobile/handheld system. Energy theft and revenue loss can be tracked due to meter tampering.

“Itron designed the Mobile Collector Lite to handle the real world bumps and stresses faced by meter readers,” said Blankenship. “It is a proven handheld device that was built to minimize transitional impacts to daily meter reading. The FC200 has been in the field for nearly two years of proven experience.”

With all of the focus on advanced metering, one might conclude that utilities are moving away from mobile RF automatic meter reading technology. The unit shipment data and market share percentages for mobile RF show that advanced metering is not pushing mobile RF aside. The market share for mobile RF has climbed from 45 percent in 2001 to 67 percent of 2005 while annual unit shipments have grown from 4.9 to 10 million. With the exception of 2004, over 90 percent of the market growth shown from 2002 to 2005 can be attributed to increased shipments of mobile AMR technology.

It is estimated that a large share of the more than 50,000 utilities across the nation?water, electric and gas?could benefit from the use of AMR. Bob Strasser, engineering manager for Itron AMR collections platforms, said Mobile Collector Lite is for utilities that want to get into the AMR space, but don’t want to invest millions of dollars to get there.

“We are probably looking at utilities that have around 10,000 to 12,000 meters or endpoints or less and don’t require the full-featured set of tools offered in a large AMR deployment,” said Strasser. “The smaller AMR customers will get many of the benefits of AMR technology but will have a lower feature set that is more tailored to their needs.”

With Mobile Collector Lite, the utility will have a blending of handheld meter reading and mobile AMR with one tool, Strasser said. Traditionally, you had to have either one or the other. “It is the blending of handheld and mobile AMR that is unique,” added Strasser.

What Makes the Mobile Collector Lite?

The Mobile Collector Lite radio is not much bigger than a laptop while the FC200 handheld can easily fit into the palm of your hand. It can increase reads from 500 meters to 10,000 meters per day. It reads radio frequency signals, can be read manually, used in probes, ERT programming and can be taken easily into the field or transferred to different vehicles.

With more than 2,000 systems in the field today, Mobile Collector Lite has proven dependability. The system is made up of:

• FC200 Handheld
• In-vehicle Docking Cradle
• Mobile Field Collector Radio
• Transmit/Receive Antenna
• MV-RS Data Collection Software

Itron’s FC200 handheld collection device is a versatile, ergonomic, ultra-rugged and environmentally immune handheld computer running the Microsoft Windows CE. NET operating system. Designed from the ground up to be as rugged as they come, the FC200 provides drop specification, operating temperature range and sealing rating and is ideal for mobile work forces that operate in demanding, mission-critical environments.

Inside the sealed enclosure system, an xScale 400 MHz processor from Intel enables powerful processing, high-performance CE-based applications. The product has a wide array of standard interfaces including serial, USB client and CompactFlash, in addition to the integrated 802.11B wireless LAN.

The Mobile Collector Lite radio contains the transmitter and receiver and utilizes the same advanced radio technology as the FC200R and the G5R handhelds. The external full-duplex radio utilizes advanced signal processing technology to collect reads on up to 80 channels simultaneously, providing the highest level of RF performance in a highly-integrated and cost effective solution. The wide-band correlator-based radio easily outperforms the scanning receiver technology used by many in the industry. The Mobile Collector Lite radio searches the 900MHz ISM band for the data packets transmitted by the ERT meter modules.

Mobile Collector Lite is completely compatible with Itron’s widely-used MV-RS data collection and host processing software application used for handhelds.

While Itron has moved into the AMI market, the company has not lost sight that many utilities will not need the full toolbox, so to speak, or the price tag that goes with it.

“It’s really overkill for smaller utilities to look at a full deployment of advanced metering,” said Blankenship. “The beauty of all of this is that as the utility grows, they can expand into larger Itron applications that will do more for them while continuing to be as efficient as possible. For now, we want to help those utilities get there.”

Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 CST 2007

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