Successfully Completed Kerala Water Authority Pilot Study

We have completed the pilot study of our LoRa based AMR meters ran at Kerala Water Authority Staff Quarters at PTP Nagar, Trivandrum.

Current System

In the current system,  meters installed with the quarters are normal mechanical meters and the reading will be taken on bi monthly basis by the meter reader manually from the meters. Also some of the other issues with the current system are

• Not able to detect the leakage on a real time basis.
• Unable to study the consumption pattern
• Unable to predict demand response
• Issue in effective allocation of resource

Our Solution

As per the scheduled plan, we installed Smart Water Meters on the KWA PTP Nagar Quarters premises suggested by Kerala Water Authority For the water meters we installed need one concentrator unit for collecting data and send it to our server hosted on our cloud server. Concentrator unit is placed in a three storey building in the KWA PTP Nagar Staff Quarters.

Findings

Out of the smart water meters we installed in the KWA PTP Nagar staff quarters, the meter will send data to the concentrator and to the cloud server once per day. We scheduled the timing in the morning with a time interval of 30 minutes in between.

Reading will send in KL units and the other details send along are,

• Section
• Concentrator ID or Device ID
• Consumer No: or Consumer ID
• Reading
• Reading Date and Time
• Meter Battery Level
• Concentrator Battery Level

We installed the Smart Water meters on 10^th July 2019 and started obtaining readings from 11^th July 2019 onwards. We evaluate different worst conditions to check whether we receive the error messages or alert properly. Some of them are:

• We place the meters in open field and do not add protective coating on PCB to test the Raw field effect
• We tried to tamper multiple meters via magnet to test the Tamper alert process.
• We were also adjusting the spreading factor to ensure the power efficiency in RF communication.

Among them, we got an alert on leakage at quarters on 14 July 2019.

• There is a sudden consumption of 15 KL on 14 July 2019 where the consumption on 13 July 2019 is 6 KL only. We in person visited the site and found a leakage in the ball valve.
• Float ball valve was not working so the tank was overflowing via rear of the building
• We immediately intimate the same to the quarter’s inmates and Assistant Executive Engineer of PTP Nagar regarding the leakage.

Technical Specifications of our solution

Hardware Specification

Available Web/Mobile Application

• Web application for Admin
• Web and Mobile application for Customer
• Mobile application for Customer

Application Development Technologies

• Application Framework used: PHP Laravel 5.6
• Languages Used: – JavaScript, Ajax, JQuery, Smarty, HTML5, PHP and CSS, Bootstrap, Smarty
• Cache : – Memcached, XCache and APC

Sample Mobile Screens of Customer interface:

Usage Report Chart

Conclusion

Some of the main highlights in our pilot study and future implications are stated here.

Water is a precious resource in the world. As water consumption and its utility is a critical factor of sustainability in the communities worldwide. Hence, Flow is an innovation that can be easily adopted. Since it is Cloud-based, it can be replicated to other cities that have issues in the water meter reading and efficiency in water usage. Flow enhances efficiency with its portable design and optimized water consumption.

The main stakes that are highlighted in the results of the study are access to the efficiency of water usage, errors in meter reading, unauthorized consumers, alert about potential anomalies and leaks, and the payment issues.

 For the customer end, it provides a better understanding of their consumption patterns by alerting if any leaks, over consumption of water or meter damage happens. They can easily track their monthly and weekly consumption details from mobile application; hence, they can efficiently use the water resources in their day to day lives.

The ability to provide both generic and custom products has put us at an advantageous position in the industry of the competition. We adapt the new trends in the global market in developing end-user solutions (smart meters) and make our product stand out even better in the market.

To encourage the new product in other areas, regional, national and international, it’s vital to mention experiences from this work to make future systems even more consumable and user-friendly. Since, it can provide high accuracy and transparency in this field, providing minimal resource wastage. FLOW is a multi-Utility metering and billing solutions for the better future.