Mike Kazmaier, P.Eng
President of Clean Cut Energy Corp.
“I believe that access to utility data is a critical tool in creating a new mindset towards energy and water use. Too often, we take for granted the electricity that lights up the dark, the heat that warms our homes, and the clean, safe water we need every day.
Clean Cut Energy helps people use these precious resources wisely and cost-effectively by providing smart utility management systems that deliver transparent, easy-to-understand utility data. When you save energy and water, you save money and protect the environment too. It’s that simple.”
Clean Cut Energy empowers customers to make smart utility decisions.
A smart utility management system
It is this kind of thinking that motivates the Clean Cut Energy team as we strive to make utility data accessible through an Internet of Things system that is reliable, accurate, affordable and easy to use.
When I founded Clean Cut Energy, it was with the vision of empowering users with information so they can make better decisions about how to use precious resources more efficiently. Clean Cut Energy has built a framework that integrates the latest ‘Internet of Things’ technology — smart sensors, two-way communications and analytics — to make data accessible to users so that we can all move forward and make smarter choices for the benefit of our planet.
With that in mind, the Clean Cut Energy family created our first product that we believe will solve a problem faced by many utilities and municipalities: how to get access to water meter data on an hourly basis, at an affordable price.
Most automated meter reading (AMR) systems are built by companies whose main interest is in selling products. They want to sell as many as possible. We believe it’s the data that’s important — not the product — and we designed our wireless WATERfactor system to collect the data as efficiently as possible even if we sell fewer units as a result.
Many of the key design features that set our product apart were inspired by this core belief: data is what matters, and getting it into the hands of the people who use the water for less than the cost of a cup of coffee is its own reward.
To accomplish our goal, we asked ourselves questions like:
- Would it make the cost per unit cheaper if we could remove the towers and the repeaters, and put that functionality into the node?
- Is it possible to read multiple water meters with a single wireless node and exploit the fact that, in many places, water meter readers are grouped together on a building?
- Can we make each node remotely upgradable, so that when we promise 20-year battery life, we can actually deliver a product that is as relevant in 20 years as it is the day it is installed, despite the inevitable changes in technology that will occur?