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Method for the real-time estimation of the total consumption of a fluid distributed to users, and a distribution network implementing said method

  • US 9,952,060 B2
  • Filed: 10/16/2012
  • Issued: 04/24/2018
  • Est. Priority Date: 10/16/2012
  • Status: Active Grant
First Claim
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1. A method for estimating in real time a total consumption of a fluid, the method comprising:

  • distributing the fluid from a unit to users via a network of supply pipes having a branch for each user, each branch equipped with a meter for the fluid consumed by the user,determining cohorts of users, each cohort of users comprising a number of users having a homogeneous behavior concerning the consumption of fluid,determining, for at least one of the cohorts, a sample of users which is less than a total number of users in the respective cohort and is statistically sufficient to represent the respective cohort, wherein;

    only the branches for the sample of users of the at least one of the cohorts are equipped with a remote reading device for reading the consumption, andone or more of the branches for the users in cohorts other than the at least one of the cohorts are also equipped with remote reading devices, andprocessing information provided by the remote reading devices to obtain in real time a value representative of the total consumption of the network,wherein all the branches of users in an upper cohort of the cohorts, which corresponds to a highest consumption among the cohorts, are equipped with remote reading devices, while the cohorts other than the upper cohort, which correspond to consumptions above a null value, have fewer than all the branches sampled, with only the branches sampled being equipped with remote reading devices, andwherein ‘

    n’

    denotes the total number of users of all the cohorts to be sampled, a size nh of the sample of users within a sampled cohort h within the at least one of the cohorts is effected according to a Neyman allocation according to which the size nh depends on a headcount Nh of the sampled cohort and on a square root Sh of a dispersion within the sampled cohort;

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