New Zealand’s largest water services provider, Watercare has started rolling out smart loggers on water meters for commercial premises in Auckland to better manage water usage across the city, save on manual reads and improve billing accuracy for commercial premises.
It’s part of a complete, managed service solution designed by Spark IoT that includes a device and SIM management platform to make it much easier to manage devices and data at scale. Currently, 3300 water meters have been logged and connected on the Spark NB-IoT network to provide usage information to us, with an additional 2500 meters to be logged.
The new smart meters mean Watercare can focus on efficiency gains thanks to having near real-time data across the connected non-residential properties, which provide a detailed overview of their water use. Faults and leaks are more easily identified and fixed, leading to cost and water savings across the board.
The data has already helped Watercare to identify a number of large leaks on our customers’ premises, which they have flagged with them so they can fix them quickly. Identifying that leak early saved thousands of litres of water – and saved the school hundreds of dollars in their water bill. We supply more than 400 million litres of water to Auckland every day, drawing water from 27 sources.
Watercare Smart Network Lead, Nish Dogra
Our says this technology has the potential to improve water management across Aotearoa. “Water is one of the most essential resources on Earth, and yet it is also one of the most undervalued, so it is vital to give more consideration towards how it is sourced, treated, and distributed – with technology being a key enabler of these processes.
Spark’s Principal Innovation Business Development Manager Matt McLay
We’re bringing together the best of smart water metering technology to help Watercare and its customers better monitor their water use efficiency, optimise billing accuracy, promote more efficient consumption and deliver maximum value to businesses. Our new NB-IoT network is the perfect connectivity fit because it provides wide reliable coverage and is suited to battery-powered metering systems that send small amounts of data. On top of this, we’ve activated NB-IoT connectivity across our cell sites to provide ~90% population coverage.
