A small city that runs its own water and power usually already has the meter data. Meters get read, a file lands somewhere, and the billing office turns it into a bill. Until that bill arrives, almost nobody looks at the numbers.
That is how a slow leak runs for a month. The resident does not see the usage. The city does not see it either. Both find out when the bill is high.
Utility Insights is a new Bloomz for Cities module that puts those numbers where people can use them. It is in pilot with the City of Fort Meade, Florida, and it is switched on city by city. This post covers what it does today, what it does not do, and how it handles the data.
What a resident sees
A household sees its own power use by the hour and its water use in 6-hour blocks. A small mark shows what is usual for that time of day, so a high block is easy to spot without reading a table. If a reading is missing, the chart shows a gap. It never shows a zero.
When the pattern looks wrong, Bloomz sends an alert in the resident’s own language. The alert carries the numbers behind it, for example how many gallons went through the meter between midnight and 6 AM on two nights, next to what a normal night looks like for that home. It can arrive as a push notice, a text, an email or a voice call.
What Bloomz watches for
Utility Insights looks for the problems that show up in meter data:
- Water running overnight or around the clock, the usual sign of a leak.
- A burst, where one block of water use is far above normal.
- Power stuck on, where the lowest hour of the day stays high for days.
- A stopped meter, which reads zero for a week in an occupied home.
- Use in a vacant home.
The last two go to city staff only. A resident is not the right person to act on a vacant-home reading or a dead meter. When a meter looks unreliable, usage alerts to the household pause, so a bad reading never looks like a leak.
What city staff see
Staff get a ranked at-risk list. Each row shows the home, the meter, the reason, how long it has been open and a 14-day trend. A staff member can open a case from a row, assign it and work it to done.
Staff can also write their own alert, such as a planned water shut-off on one street. The alert editor shows how the message will read on each channel, push, text, email and voice call, and lets staff edit each one. A short text and a full email should not have to say the same words.
Before a city changes an alert rule, it can preview the change. The preview shows what the new limit would have raised over recent readings. Nothing is sent from a preview, so a city can tune a limit without surprising a single resident.
How it handles the data
Hourly meter readings are the city’s records. Utility Insights is designed to keep them inside the city’s own Bloomz account, not published or exported elsewhere. Staff see a single home’s data only when the city has given them access, and each of those views is logged. Texts go to numbers the city already holds or the resident entered. They carry alerts, not promotions, and they honor STOP.
What it does not do yet
Be clear about the edges. Bills in the app, a monthly home report that compares a home with similar homes, and conservation tips are planned for pilot cities. They are not available today. Utility Insights does not take payments. It is not priced yet either, so there is no number to quote.
It also depends on files. It reads the meter-reading and billing files a city already produces, and the first step with any city is confirming the column layout against a sample file.
Where to look
The Utility Insights page has the interactive screens. What’s New for Cities shows where the module sits next to everything else, and a short demo call can walk through it with your meter files in mind.