Agreement Concluded on Demonstration Test of Automatic Water Meter Reading via Electricity Smart Meter Communication Network in Iizuna Town

Iizuna Town, Nagano Prefecture (Mayor: Katsumori Minemura; "Iizuna Town"), Chubu Electric Power Co., Inc. (President & Director: Kingo Hayashi; "Chubu Electric Power"), and Chuden Telemetering LLC (President: Hidetomo Noda; "Chuden Telemetering") today concluded an agreement on a demonstration test of automatic water meter reading ("the Demonstration") using the electricity smart meter communication network provided by Chuden Telemetering.

Iizuna Town has a chronic shortage of meter readers due to the declining birthrate and aging society. In addition, there are some other issues during the winter season, such as a decline in the effective water ratio (Note) due to delays in finding leaks in residential areas caused by aging facilities and freezing, etc. as well as complicated billing process based on past water use, caused by accumulated snow which prevents meter reading throughout the entire town.

In the Demonstration, we aim for labor saving in automatic water meter reading and early detection of water leakage in winter, confirming that the electricity smart meter communication network provides stable access to water usage data even in environments where water meters are covered with snow. We will also consider new value-added services that are beneficial to both water utilities and users, using the water consumption data obtained through automatic meter reading.

Iizuna Town will use the Demonstration to deepen its knowledge of automatic water meter reading, solve various issues related to the meter reading, and improve efficiency.
Chubu Electric Power and Chuden Telemetering will use the results of the Demonstration to further accelerate the creation of new value using the electricity smart meter communication network.

(Note) The ratio of the water volume to be supplied to the water volume received as a charge

＜Outline of the Demonstration＞