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Client Name: City of Santa Ana I AMI FEASIBILITY REPORT Access to water usage data and leak notification services are value-added reasons for more customers to visit the City website. Customers should be encouraged to sign up for electronic payment when on the customer portal. This will ultimately reduce the cost of bill printing and mailing. Another benefit of customer portal is that customers will make fewer calls as they will have access to online data. 6.5 SOFTWARE INTEGRATION AMI and MDMS systems are key enterprise applications, and whether AMI is provided as a hosted and managed service solution (discussed in detail in later sections) or installed in the utility data center, there are key integration activities that are required to successfully implement the AMI program and make AMI a core utility solution. At the start of the project, to support the deployment phase, it is necessary to obtain a data abstract from the billing system that identifies the location and type of each meter. This information is used to plan the initial deployment process and approach. As meters are installed or replaced, it is essential that the final reads are recorded and installed meter information be provided back to billing system, MDMS and AMI HES as rapidly as possible. Best practice is to have the field installer handheld data uploads aggregated into an installation work management system and then uploaded to billing system nightly. The installation work management system must, therefore, be integrated into billing system to allow two-way updates that will continue through mass meter retrofit and deployment and into long-term operation. The MDMS is a long-term data management tool and information system as well as a deployment tool. Black & Veatch experience and industry best practices highlight the value of installing the MDMS in advance of an AMI meter deployment. All of the meter collection systems should be integrated into the MDMS, making it the single point of integration into billing system. This reduces the complexity of billing system integration and does not require billing system to integrate to multiple meter reading systems. The MDMS maintains this knowledge and sends information to and obtains reads from whichever solution is responsible for the meter. As meters are moved from manual reading to AMI -enabled, the MDMS seamlessly manages the transition. Therefore, the MDMS for the City will be integrated with the AMI HES as well as the current manual meter reading system. These are common integrations for MDMS solutions, so most will have demonstrated commercially available adapters for the major meter read systems. The MDMS may also need to interface with the City's work order management systems or work scheduling solutions unless this is coordinated through the billing system. As the primary AMI data management solution and data repository, the MDMS will need to integrate with other systems that require the AMI data. Some of these integrations can be simple data extracts or batch processes and others will require a more structured interface. In case, the City opts for a solution that does not require MDMS, AMI vendors offer AMI HES and data storage for the meter data. This option must be carefully evaluated to verify that the solution will meet all requirements to ensure data integrity through VEE process. There is a risk if the data storage is used and it cannot support VEE capability. This can result in data gaps or data with abnormal values that need to be validated and cleaned. BLACK & VEATCH I Strategic Analysis of Systems for Future Development 27 25G-145