Integrating data for smarter water systems

The big theme of Day 1 of the Smart Water Systems conference was the data integration across the network that will be required to fully realise the benefits from smart metering.

It’s important to emphasise that meters aren’t smart in themselves. They sit there collecting data, albeit with far greater granularity than has previously been available, and send it somewhere. It’s what is done with that data that turns the system into a much smarter tool to help manage leakage, water resources, improve customer service and all the other benefits that are routinely trotted out.

It’s  interesting that several speakers have questioned our ability to harness the power of that data effectively. Will the systems be able to cope with the sheer amount of data that could potentially be incoming? Are the business processes in place that can effectively use that data?

A lot of focus is on smart metering at the consumer level and there will be lots of new customer meters installed next AMP. But what about the rest of the network? There was an interesting case study from Denmark about the upgrades they have had to do on their DMA meters to be able to implement a smarter network and better match the high resolution data from their smart customer meters with DMA data. Customer meters can go so far, but the smart network needs to bring in all the meters in the network – source to tap – to provide a holistic view.

Some speakers have even mentioned the integration of wastewater. Given that a high percentage of water used in a property goes down the sewer in one form or another, there is a strong link that is starting to be thought about. How can this be used to better manage storm overflows, for example? It’s great to hear some of this quite radical thinking and the ambitions that water companies and others have – we just need to turn them into reality which will be far from easy.