WATER PAGES
specific engineers looking at battery technology, it is a big part of making a reliable meter. We have a very deterministic battery usage profile, built around the specific requirements of water meters, with expected operational life of the battery laser-etched onto the meter.
Companies will want to know when the batteries are to start running out - knowing where they are on the lifetime curve is important. Devices will be fitted in groups or clusters that are easy to manage or maintain, rather than scattered across a huge geographic area. This will avoid a scenario where a technician goes out to replace a battery on just one meter, when the next one along has five years left in it.
Utilities are acutely aware of meter
longevity if purely for economic reasons, usually stating a minimum of 10 years or more operational life in their tenders, although the longer the better. However, often the correlation with ensuring communications power efficiency and effective battery management is not always fully considered. It will not make a difference over the first five years or so, but problems can arise further down the line without these factors being factored in. It should be a major part of designing the whole end-to-end system.
How should utilities prepare for the increase in data?
Smart metering involves the collection of multiple readings and alarm information for every meter every day - this adds up to a lot of information that needs to be stored and processed. Therefore, a
significant investment must be made in the IT infrastructure – datacentres or cloud-service providers, with associated staff, security measures and additional training.
For companies planning their wider rollout, when should they engage their technology provider?
As soon as possible. There will be a number of technology-based decisions to be made and many stakeholders will be involved. Xylem has the experience, and proofs of concept and trials are a good way to understand the technology and we can help plan and explore those. The end-goal should be to integrate the right mix of smart water technologies and applications, to create a reliable, robust and future-proofed network.
LeakNavigator saves millions of litres of water
The UK’s largest water and wastewater company, Thames Water, has selected Ovarro’s end-to-end service LeakNavigator to deliver a three-year leakage reduction contract, writes Tony Gwynne, global leakage solutions director at Ovarro.
Thames Water is working to achieve a 20.5% reduction in leakage across London and the Thames Valley, region to
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meet regulatory targets. Beginning in January 2023, a project has been underway to install 3,450 Ovarro sensors – models Enigma 3-BB, Enigma 3hyQ and Enigma 3m - across 110 district metered areas (DMAs) within the water network.
The sensors provide a daily call-in with leak data, and just 20 weeks into the project, 788 leaks had been raised and categorised. A total of 5.78 megalitres of
| December 2023 |
www.draintraderltd.com
water per day has been saved in the areas served by LeakNavigator.
End-to-end service
LeakNavigator comprises advanced acoustic dataloggers, cutting-edge cloud-based software, and Ovarro’s inhouse leakage expertise. With all elements combined, the service can accurately identify points of interest
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