The city of Atlanta is expanding its partnership with an Austin-based startup that monitors the city water meters to make sure they’re working efficiently.
Olea Edge Analytics uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to identify any problems or inefficiencies in city-owned water meters in order to recover lost revenue and help city workers target maintenance resources.
Olea’s technology could identify the meters that have leaks, diagnose the problem and prioritize meters that need to be fixed first to mitigate revenue losses.
The Atlanta City Council unanimously approved the $3.8 million partnership in September 2020. The startup is now in the process of adding an additional 1,600 Olea sensors to the city’s water meters, Olea founder and CEO Dave Mackie said.
Mackie said Atlanta is the startup’s flagship city to pilot its products. Its partnership began in 2018 with 70 Olea sensors on water meters across the city. That soon expanded to 700 sensors, which Mackie said helped the city identify $10 million in potential revenue in a year.
“Our solution really gives a visibility and actionability to prioritize repairs right away,” Mackie said. “Even if you were to go out and look at a water meter, you would have no idea if it’s working well or not.”
With the Olea sensors, Mackie said the city can spend less resources diagnosing problems and more resources fixing them.
Quinn Jackson-Elliott, Olea’s senior director of business development, works with Atlanta through the partnership. She said the city’s water meters were previously overlooked and underserved when looking for efficiencies and ways to recovery lost revenue.
“When introduced to Olea, Atlanta was really focused on smart water and innovation,” Jackson-Elliott said. “Atlanta was not uncomfortable with introducing new technology in different areas of the utility.”
Atlanta has about 4,000 large water meters and about 10,000 mid-sized meters, Jackson-Elliott said, which are where the Olea sensors are mostly being deployed.
Mackie said Olea is looking to expand into other cities, specifically in their home state, and have other pilot programs in the works.
