Multinational smart meter firm Landis+Gyr is to refund Auckland Watercare customers who it had wrongly been billing extra for the past year
Watercare has been rolling out smart meters to thousands of homes and businesses, touting them as the solution to leaks and wasteful water use and a key driver in Auckland’s water efficiency strategy. Indeed, the Three Waters reforms assume that all 10 new water corporations will eventually switch to water metering, and Watercare's technology is leading the way.
But Newsroom has learned that 17,000 smart meters, supplied by Swiss-based technology firm Landis+Gyr, were wrongly adding about six litres to every customer's bill, every day. This would be transmitted to Watercare's computers in the early hours of the morning, and customers would be billed accordingly.
Most of the affected customers are residential, though there are also 132 businesses – small water users like dairies and offices.
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The defect went unnoticed for nearly a year. Landis+Gyr eventually disclosed it to Watercare on June 26, and says it's also told an affected Australian customer. Newsroom has confirmed that is Melbourne's South East Water, which had 16,500 customers relying on the defective smart meters.
In New Zealand, the excess charges weren't big – just $9.85 on average for residential customers. Commercial customers overpaid an average $19. But multiplied by 17,000 customers, it comes to $162,000 that Landis+Gyr will have to refund Aucklanders.
Watercare's chief customer officer is Amanda Singleton. She says the 17,000 Auckland customers with Landis+Gyr smart water meters were being charged an extra 2.6 cents a day for water they did not use.
"We are taking this issue very seriously, and we are in the process of informing and refunding customers," she says.
Watercare has briefed Mayor Wayne Brown and has paused its roll-out of Landis+Gyr smart meters, until it's "100 percent confident" the error is fixed. Watercare also provides water and wastewater services to Waikato District, but mayor Jacqui Church says their residents aren't affected because the council handles the billing itself.
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Watercare's Amanda Singleton wrote to affected customers on Tuesday afternoon this week, telling them of the overcharging. My family was one of those that received the letter. "While we are very disappointed about this technical issue, we are glad that it has been identified, which means we can now correct it," she wrote. Watercare will refund households like ours by applying a credit to our September bill, she says. Landis+Gyr will fix the technical issue with our smart water meter by the end of September. Meanwhile Watercare will install and monitor several test meters at the council-controlled organisation's training centre, to assure them the error is 100 percent fixed. – Jonathan Milne |
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Watercare is working with Landis+Gyr to fix the glitch when the data is transmitted, Singleton says, and is confident the problem will be fully resolved by the end of September. That means upgrading the firmware (computer programme) which will in most cases be done remotely; there may be a few properties that Watercare engineers will have to visit.
"While the impact on customers is small, we strongly believe we need to put the issue right," she says. "That’s why we’re front-footing the situation by alerting customers and proactively refunding them."
In Australia, where Landis+Gyr's Australia and New Zealand management is based, an Australian water utility is also affected: South East Water in Melbourne, which serves about 1.9 million people.
It bought 35,000 W350 ultrasonic and narrowband internet-of-things water meters off Landis – the same model that has been rolled out by Watercare.
South East Water learned of the problems with the meters' sensors in May, even though Watercare wasn't advised till the end of June.
South East Water spokesperson Andrea Reichwald says the utility immediately contacted and refunded nominal funds to affected customers with Landis+Gyr meters.
About 16,500 of South East Water's customers were affected, with costs ranging from AU$5 to $30.
The utility credited customers' accounts, to cover the time from when the defective meters were first installed, through to when the issue is expected to be fixed in September.
In New Zealand, Landis+Gyr's country manager left earlier this year, and it's still recruiting a replacement. Meanwhile, other problems have begun to manifest. Yesterday, search engines barred access to its New Zealand website, saying its security has been compromised, potentially by cyber-attackers.
Yee Ling Wee, the company's Sydney-based spokesperson, says her security team advised her last week an old New Zealand website had resurfaced, due to an old security certificate. "They are working to resolve that and are supposed to give me an update this week."
On the bigger problem of the defective water meters, she and the company's Australasian vice president, David Maclean, are more reticent about answering questions. "Landis+Gyr has over 127 years’ experience partnering with utilities around the world and continue to solve complex energy and water management issues with our customers to decarbonise the grid and preserve the world’s most precious resource, water," Wee says.
"Non-revenue water losses are not only expensive for utilities and end consumers but pose severe challenges to sustainable water management. Digital metering solutions offer a good pathway to help utilities and end consumers to manage water sustainably."
On the overcharging, Wee says: "We have provided a solution to this issue, and we continue to support Watercare as they resolve it with their customers. Due to commercial reasons, we will not be able to respond to your questions."
Part of Landis+Gyr's reluctance to disclose the problems may be that the company, which is listed on the Swiss stock exchange, doesn't appear to have notified investors of problems in the W350 device – despite boasting in its annual report that "smart metering remains the core of our business".
When pressed, Wee says the company was "transparent with our customers", and those companies in turn did the right thing to inform their end customers.
"Being a B2B business, our customers, which are the utilities, manage the front-facing and customer engagement. It's not often that we provide media quotes unless it's our own press releases."
