Sharing Best Practice with Water Professionals from Singapore

Eight guests from the Singapore Public Utilities Board (PUB), the country’s national water agency, visited Louisville Water last month for a meeting to “share knowledge amongst peer utilities,” said Eric Ayers, Louisville Water Project Manager.

The focus of the meeting was Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). Advanced meters have wireless communication capabilities to send data to a utility’s receivers, which means advanced meters facilitate monthly billing and make it easy for customers to monitor their water consumption through an online portal such as Pure Connect.

Louisville Water launched its AMI project in 2020. More than two thirds of our customers now have advanced meters, and nearly 150,000 Jefferson County accounts — about half — now receive monthly bills.

(Louisville Water is working to expand the AMI project to Oldham and Bullitt County customers.)

In Singapore, “PUB is rolling out smart water meters on residential and commercial/industrial premises under the first phase of its Smart Water Meter Program,” Ayers said. “Singapore PUB has over 1,500,000 water meters, with 309,000 AMI water meters installed in their Feasibility AMI Project that is currently underway. To date, they have completed nearly 275,000 installations and look to wrap up this phase of the project by the end of 2024.”

After exchanging information on smart meters, water distribution systems, and plant operations, a group of our water professionals led their Singaporean counterparts on a tour of the Louisville Water Tower and WaterWorks Museum. The two groups also visited a nearby Louisville Water advanced meter site.

Jacobs Engineering, the consulting engineers for both the Singapore and Louisville AMI projects, coordinated the PUB trip to the U.S., where the group also visited four other utilities.