A consortium led by Optus Networks Australia and including Iota has been awarded the Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) Smart Water Meter contract for the Toowoomba Regional Council (TRC).
The contract will see a staged implementation of up to 68,000 smart water meters subject to a successful Proof of Concept to deliver accurate data and real-time water usage updates, as well as early detection of leaks, for residents in the Toowoomba region.
“Council will work with OPTUS, Iota and GreenBe to develop the processes and logistics needed to implement this technology,” Water and Waste Committee Chair Cr Rebecca Vonhoff, said.
“The smart water meter technology will give Council accurate data and improve early detection of leaks and breaks.
Iota will supply its fully integrated ultrasonic Cura™ digital meters, communicating through Optus’s NB-IoT network.
The meter data will be analysed by Iota’s fit-for-water enterprise IoT platform, Lentic®, which will integrate with TRC’s enterprise systems to provide valuable insights and help residents monitor water usage and allow TRC to proactively manage its water network.
Iota will also implement Flow Lotic™ on the Council’s larger commercial meters so that they can send data through to Lentic® via the NBIoT network.
Iota’s digital water solutions are unique as they are developed and tested at scale within its parent company South East Water.
“Lentic® is best in breed globally – an enterprise IoT platform designed from the ground up for water and all of the proven use cases” Iota’s CEO, Daniel Sullivan, said. “It has the alarms, rules management and dashboards that a modern water utility needs in an enterprise IoT platform to manage the new generation of smart water meters. It’s been designed by a water utility for a water utility, so is fit-for-purpose out of the box”
The Lentic® platform and Iota’s domain expertise were key reasons the consortium was selected.
“Toowoomba Regional Council was impressed with what Lentic® could do for them, in terms of their requirements around digital metering, but also how it can help the Council to transition into a digital utility as they embrace IoT and data. It’s really encouraging to see a water utility think beyond AMI towards being a digital utility.”
Mr. Sullivan said the Lentic® platform will be integrated into the Council’s various corporate systems including Billing, Asset Management and Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and expects it to provide significant benefits to the Council and the regional community.
“It’s challenging to make capital decisions and plan for the future if you don’t have sufficient data about your water network, but IoT also connects you to your customers. IoT provides utilities and customers with the tools and information to ensure we preserve the most precious natural resource.” Mr. Sullivan said.
Consortium partner GreenBe will use data from Lentic®, to display consumption dashboards for customers and notifications when water usage goes beyond a certain threshold.
Residential, industrial and commercial volunteers from the local community will be part of the initial rollout of the meters in the second Quarter of 2022, allowing for testing and fine-tuning of the system.