The installation of new automated water meters has proceeded as planned with more than 56,000 already in place, a conference on water management heard this morning.

Stephen Galea St John from the Water Services Corporation said all meters will be changed by the end of next year and will result in more frequent and accurate billing and substantial decrease in unaccounted for water (water which is not billed).

The conference was organised as part of the corporation's 20th anniversary and brought together experts, both Maltese and foreign, to discuss non revenue water - water produced or fed into the system by the corporation but which is not paid for by the consumer.

He said this could be the result of a number of factors which include theft, although this is limited, meter reading and billing mistakes and meter under registration - water that actually passes through the meter but remains undetected.

This aspect is expected to be drastically improved with the new meters and with the installation on special software which detects poor performance by the meter and flags its need to be changed.

One of the problems the corporation is facing when dealing with under registration of meters are the water tanks on people's roofs because low flows are not detected by meters.

The new meters are transmitting data remotely every four hours, enabling the corporation to detect a problem when variations between consumption and supply vary.

The new meters are also helping the corporation detect leakage problems.

The conference was also addressed by an Italian water expert who gave an overview of how water leakage was dealt with in Italy.