What can Smart Water Metering do
to Reduce Water Shortages and Waste ?
Water is a fundamental component in every human activity and while resource scarcity is increasing, smart water metering can help rethink the way we use water, utilizing smart technologies and IoT in order to reduce waste, shortages and upgrade existing infrastructure.
Water is the primary ingredient of carbon based life and it sits as a fundamental component in every human activity since the dawn of civilization.
Freshwater counts for 2,5% of the total water amount on Earth, as an modern day utility, water stands for an increase of over 64 billion cubic meters per year, while freshwater withdrawals have tripled over the last 50 years. The United Nations report from 2016 shows alarming trends behind the data with estimates around 30% of global water is lost through leakage.
Digitally transforming water metering with smart technologies is an imperative initiative from both technological and environmental perspectives. According to DeviceHub`s Smart Water Metering case study in the EU, household usage is usually around 15% of the total water used.
Agriculture and industry sectors make up 44% and 40% of the total water used.
The European Union through the European Environment Agency has been conducting dynamic research on industrial water waste in each sector of the industry, offering a more contextualized overview. Operational waste is going towards double digits figures, which is inexcusable, especially when climate change and desertification is an issue from California to the Pacific Islands.
Areas that lack freshwater sources and need to import from long distances would be the first to benefit from an advanced smart metering system helping reduce waste and on a longterm, contribute to a better urban landscape.
Predominantly, Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) systems uses cellular communications to send information from the smart meter to the cloud, especially when deploying networks through LPWAN communications technology, like Sigfox, NB IoT, LoRA Wan or wi-fi.
Although this is not always the case, when implementing a network based on other communications, like MBus and wireless MBus, the infrastructure in order to work properly and in real-time, needs gateways to collect the data from the meters in its endpoint and only then transfer the information in the cloud platform.
Over the last years, the market trend balanced towards cellular communications, especially due to lower time of deployment and more flexible system architecture. Even though there are pros and cons in every situation, emergent communications mediums like LoRaWan, Sigfox or NB IoT, each quite different than the other, don’t have the history of large scale implementations.
From the pilot deployments started in in 2016 and 2017, there is no completed large scale deployment announced until the start of the second quarter of 2018, making it hard to predict what will become the norm in the industry.
From the utility vendor`s internal approach, smart water metering means an infrastructure upgrade, new workflow protocols and less people involved.
Cloud based application that manages data end to end is an enabler for waste preventive activities, that today cannot be performed with the current technology: real-time pipeline leak geolocation, automatic signal for overrun debit, steam metrics regarding hot water production, final consumer improper or damaged water installation and indicate other preventive maintenance measures.
Digital transformation of utilities
From customer service to customer experience
Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) is the first step on the road for smart grid and smart city. From the traditional approach, the “blindly” planned subscription, backed by no user contextualized data, infrastructure model in the smart the consumer becomes the center of the process.
The company has a transparent reference system, backed by real-time data to undertake the billing process, while the consumer can check and do the math himself. Besides billing, the consumer can utilise information regarding time and value of water used, in order to upgrade home appliances that use too much resources, waste far less water, and educate though saving money by using less.
Sub-metering becomes automated from the platform on predefined meters or groups of meters for space renters to bill their tenants transparently.
In use cases regarding industrial parks, docks, airports and similar facilities that involve a high usage, multi utility metering and sub-metering is a must have functionality for the data management solution.
Emerging technology and environmental challenges
The same UN report estimates It is estimated that the number of people living in environments with high water quality will be one fifth of the total population by 2050. Also risks from excessive nitrogen and phosphorous will increase to one third of the global population over the same period. The United Nations University`s research initiatives gathering experts from international organizations, universities, national administrations and private entrepreneurs .
Smart solutions usually are more sustainable than traditional solution, smart metering included. Telecommunications don’t interfere with the usual flow of nature, use less electricity and limited resource. The drive by AMI reading, where a digital unit would collect the index from a proximity range of a few hundreds of feet.
Drive by models although more efficient for the utility company than working with field workers, have a bigger impact on the environment and is a translation to the fully remote reading infrastructure.
Smart Water Metering is complex conversation that impacts almost everybody and it is why we need to understand the context and understand what makes technology important and how it can improve fundamental aspects of daily life.
DeviceHub’s Smart Metering Pro offers cloud solution for automatic meter reading, meter data management, device management, analytics and reporting — offering an end-to-end application that integrates all utilities in one dashboard for utility vendors, meter producers and space renters.
