Dakota Supply Group - Index

Dakota Supply Group - dakotaoctober - Index

Up For Any Challenge
The last few years have been exciting ones
for DSG Metering Technology. New ideas, new
technologies and big new projects. This year,
a couple of DSG Metering Technology’s larger
projects are taking place in the lake country
of Minnesota.
One of the bigger undertakings that DSG is
currently working on is in Duluth, Minnesota,
where more than 25,000 water and 25,000 gas
meters are either being replaced with or upgraded
to Itron’s drive-by AMR system. The project kicked
off on February 1, 2008, and installation began on
April 1, 2008. Today, the project is already more
than 50 percent complete. “We’re on budget and
ahead of schedule,” says Project Manager and
DSG Metering Technology Northern Minnesota
Territory Manager Mike McNabb. “We’ve been
running an excellent quality control regimen up
here to make sure all the products are on-site and
that the installation is correct.”
McNabb had been calling on Duluth since 2003,
when he joined DSG. After an exhaustive product
search, Duluth decided to go with the innovative
Project Manager Mike McNabb installs new Itron
AMR retrofits to existing meters in Duluth, MN.
technology of Itron’s drive-by AMR system from
DSG. Duluth had an old-fashioned system that
used hand-held data collectors, and it was difficult
to read a lot of data quickly. The new Itron AMR
system being installed is much more efficient and
more cost-effective, and it can read many more
meters much faster. “If they wanted to, the city
could read every meter in Duluth in two days,”
declares McNabb.
Duluth isn’t the only big project that DSG has in
the works. Minnetonka, MN, is employing DSG’s
products and services to change out approximately
15,000 water meters (that’s every residential meter
in the city), replacing them with Badger Meter’s
Orion System. This feature-rich AMR system has a
leak detector on every meter. “Ten percent of the
meters we’ve installed so far have shown a leak,”
says McNabb. “That means that one out of every
ten of Minnetonka’s residents had a leak they
didn’t know about until they upgraded to the new
system.” Both Duluth and Minnetonka projects are
expected to be done before the end of 2008.
continued on page 48
METERING TECHNOLOGY
Fall 2008 CONNECTIONS 47