Smart metering for the electrical grid has generated a lot of buzz in the last five years. The promise is to make electrical grids more robust by allowing utilities to remotely monitor electricity usage at homes and businesses. If there is an outage, the utility immediately knows.

With that market in full swing, technology companies are now looking to do the same with the water network. Eka Systems announced on Tuesday the launch of a product, called EKA-1600, that ties existing water meters into wireless networks. This marks the entry of the Germantown, Maryland, company into the smart water-metering market.

Marty Gilroy, manager for product marketing at Eka, said remote metering saves money, strengthens the system, and provides more information to water operators. Personnel will no longer need to go house-to-house in search of water usage data. And water operators will get more frequent information about the health of the network, which should help them respond to breaks or leaks, said Mr. Gilroy.

Mr. Gilroy would not disclose the price of the remote devices, but did say that a utility based outside North America recovered its costs in less than a year.

The city of San Marcos, Texas, is convinced of the value of Eka Systems products. In May the city announced that it was commissioning advanced metering infrastructure from the company. As part of the project, 30,000 electric and water meters will be wirelessly networked.

“The first place utilities look to save money is in labor,” said John Moore, chief executive of Acorn Energy, a holding company based in Delaware that invests in electrical grid technology companies. “Once your business is helping utilities reduce costs of meter reading, then there’s the potential to help them add intelligence to a network beyond labor.”

But Eka Systems is not alone in the advanced water metering market. Liberty Lake, Washington-based Itron claims to be the world’s leading provider of meters and advanced metering infrastructure technology.  Also, Nasdaq-traded Itron had revenue of $1.46 billion in 2007. BadgerMeter, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is another major player.

In addition to competition, the notoriously slow pace of utilities and changing and inconsistent regulatory environments are challenges to the growth of the advanced metering market.

Eka Systems is backed by the Angeleno Group, Rockport Capital Partners, Flybridge Capital Partners, and The Westly Group.