Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
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24 | JUNE 2018 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk • METERING FACTS • While standard meters can reduce average water consumption by 15 per cent, the extra information provided by smart meters means they can reduce consumption even further, by 17 per cent on average, according to the National Infrastructure Commission. • Around 50 per cent of homes in England are currently metered and this is expected to reach around 80 per cent by 2050, saving around 400 Ml/day. Nearly all homes are expected to be metered by around 2070 (NIC report) • Southern Water has the highest rate of metering in the UK (88 per cent) following a large-scale compulsory roll-out in the last five years. However most of these are automated meter read (AMR) meters, which are read periodically from the street outside a house, rather than smart meters where data is updated constantly • Thames Water has rolled out 240,000 smart meters made by Sensus (pictured below), which produce hourly data, since 2016. It aims to meter 75 per cent of household properties in London and 90 per cent in the Thames Valley by 2030 • Anglian Water has installed 6,000 smart meters in Newmarket as part of its Innovation Shop Window initiative. Following installation, it saw an 8 per cent drop in water consumption over 12 months. It has also identified 500 customer leaks as a result of the meters. Half of these were leaking toilets The Works: metering • THE TECHNOLOGY W hile companies in the most water-stressed areas have a persuasive case to pay out for the current advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) devices, others may prefer to see how the technology evolves before committing their resources. Globally, the Internet of Things (IoT) – and particularly the development of smart cities, in which radio and communications infrastructure is installed across an area to collect an array of data – is paving the way for improvements. Chinese telecommunications equipment manufacturer Huawei has already developed a system using narrowband (NB)-IoT, a low-power wide-area network (LPWAN) radio technology. According to the GSM Association (Global System for Mobile Communications), NB- IoT's advantages include low power consumption – with devices operating for up to 10 years on a single charging cycle – as well as low cost at the device end, secure connectivity and superior operation in bad coverage areas. Huawei's NB-IoT 'Smart Water Solution' relies on inherited networks, upgraded from the existing 2G, 3G and 4G cellular base stations provided by operators. In Shenzhen, Huawei worked with Shenzhen Water, China Telecom and Ningbo Water Meter Co. to launch the world's first commercial NB-IoT-based smart meter reading project in March 2017, with further projects taking place in Yingtan and Fuzhou. "Being an innovative solution collecting hydrological data related to the water supply and drainage systems in real-time, enabling water-level monitoring of rivers, channels, major water gates and enterprise sewage outlets, this solution helps water utilities make important decisions based on the data collected," a Huawei spokesperson tells WWT. The Smart Water Solution can be upgraded to 5G, and the spokesperson says that this means the system "is indeed future-proof ", adding: "Already today, this existing standard provides for a broad range of applications associated with the Internet of Things. As the deployment of 5G gathers momentum and the cyclical replacement of water meters continues, the possible spectre of applications designed to optimise water management will enlarge even further." Other LPWAN technologies, notably LoRa and Sigfox, can also help deliver next-level smart metering, despite concerns that – as unlicensed spectrum solutions – they are vulnerable to interference, while they also operate outside existing cellular infrastructure. The security of water metering data is a growing priority for utilities, especially in the light of new GDPR regulations.