Our customers deliver essential services of water, gas, and electricity to their communities. We build smart connections that empower and equip them to be resilient through life’s interruptions, both big and small.
Aging infrastructure. Natural disasters. Climate change. Utilities need systems in place to predict and plan for such emergencies and adapt to the ever-changing demands of daily operations. We help customers do just that.
Our two-way FlexNet® communication network delivers timely data and prepares utilities for emergencies before they occur. It enables proactive monitoring, provides endless opportunities for operational efficiencies, and ultimately creates a more sustainable future for communities. Smart, dependable, and resilient at every point, our smart infrastructure solutions keep you connected to the information you need to provide the most reliable service to your customers.
Resilient at Every Point
Customer: Cities of Arlington and Coppell, TX
Event: Winter Storm Uri, 2021
Challenge: Address water loss and prevent property damage during winter emergency
Solution: Remotely identify leaks, monitor usage and pinpoint issues
Resilient Results: Identified 4,800 Arlington apartment units without water and quickly restored service to 47 complexes. Remotely shut off ~400 water leaks in Coppell in just one day.
Customer: Alliant Energy (Cedar Rapids, IA)
Event: Derecho (powerful windstorm), 2020
Challenge: Improve outage response capabilities across Midwest service territory
Solution: Deploy smart utility network to enable timely remote system management
Resilient Results: Restored power to most customers within a few days, to all 260,000 customers in 16 days
Customer: Chesterfield County Rural Water Company and Mount Pleasant Waterworks (South Carolina)
Event: Severe winter weather, 2018
Challenge: Prevent water loss due to burst service lines
Solution: Use the FlexNet system to identify, quantify and notify customers of ruptured lines within hours
Resilient Results: Chesterfield saved customers from increased water bills. Mount Pleasant monitored thousands of meters and notified ~100 customers of possible leaks.
Customer: Nueces Electric Cooperative (Corpus Christi, TX)
Event: Hurricane Harvey, 2017
Challenge: Rapidly restore power and essential services post-storm
Solution: Use the FlexNet system to share timely and accurate outage information about the exact trouble spots
Resilient Results: Restored power to ~8,200 homes and businesses within 48 hours
Customer: The City of San Bruno, CA
Event: Severe drought, 2015
Challenge: Water conservation
Solution: Real-time monitoring to find water leaks and conserve resources
Resilient Results: Better customer service that allows San Bruno to proactively alert users of costly leaks, ultimately, conserving precious water resources.
Customer: Stafford Township, N.J.
Event: Superstorm Sandy, 2012
Challenge: Identify specific points for repair among $70 billion in damage
Solution: Use a smart utility network to pinpoint leaks and determine where to send crews for repairs.
Resilient Results: Restored services faster and avoided additional damage.
Data from our system let us know who was with or without power. We could also identify (damaged) transformers…so we knew where to dispatch technicians.
Midwest windstorm, 2020
Without the Xylem system, the entire city could have been without water, and our response would have been totally different. The system paid for itself in just that one week.
Winter Storm Uri, 2021
If there was no FlexNet system, we wouldn’t know about a leak until the customer got an unusually high water bill.
Superstorm Sandy, 2012
(The network) allowed us to pinpoint outages quicker and we restored power to all of our members in almost a week’s time.
Western Kentucky tornado, 2021
We’re not running trucks after hours. That alone delivers huge cost savings. We don’t know if we can live without (the technology).
The FlexNet communication network is like having X-ray vision of your water system.
Winter Storm Uri, 2021
I firmly believe FlexNet helped us keep up with the intense customer demand… we caught the leaks and saved our customers from increased water bills. Without it, we would have run out of water.
Snow event, 2018
We were able to act quickly because our system let us know exactly where to put boots on the ground. We had 97 percent of customers who had lost power back up and running within 96 hours.
Hurricane Florence, 2018
We take pride in an effective disaster recovery plan for our customers and the FlexNet system is the strongest, most robust setup for outage management.
Hurricane Harvey, 2017
We also appreciate how easy (the FlexNet system) was to use. We’re lake scientists, not technology people, and we’ve been able to quickly and seamlessly use the technology to improve our monitoring capabilities.
We don’t have to deploy technicians in the field as often to respond to the needs of the community. Having access to accurate, real-time data allows us to answer questions and service customers without the need for an in-person visit.
It didn’t take long for the entire system to pay itself off in terms of the money we saved from reducing water loss. Within one year, we eliminated 12 million gallons of lost water.