Thought Paper for the GWI Report on Water’s Digital Future

The outlook for monitoring, control and data management systems.

Our vision of water’s digital future is about creating the ability to control. There are many dark and distant places in water and wastewater networks. They provide no information on their performance and they are unable to respond in real time to changes.

It means that a manager’s ability to control water assets is limited both operationally and strategically. In the short term it costs money in terms of energy consumption, staff time, and poor asset management. In the long term it leads to poor planning and strategic investment decisions. 

The key to control is connection. By connecting all water related objects to the internet of things, utilities can be optimised minute by minute and in the long term. However, connection is a  much greater challenge than many people think.

Hardware system suppliers are looking to smart systems to help them achieve vendor lock-in which means that there is a proliferation of protocols for communication between water related objects. Open systems standards have yet to become widely established.

The result is that any vision of the internet of things for water is currently obscured by a thick mesh of competing standards which need to be made to work together before water managers can take control of their assets.

That is where I-Real comes in. Our slogan is “We connect, you control”, and our business is about connecting water related objects to the internet of things. I-Real has connected in The Netherlands over 75.000 water objects including tens of thousands ground water level sensors and tens of thousands of pumps.

We connect PLC [programmable logic controllers] from a range of suppliers including Schneider, Mitsubishi and Xylem/Flygt , as well as a huge range of dataloggers and sensors. It enables us to track and control every aspect of water management from ground and surface water sources to wastewater return. We manage data delivered over twelve different communications platforms operating under more than 20 different protocols.

It has enabled customers to drive the efficiency of their operations and to plan for the future. For example; one I-Real customer realized that the overflow capacity in one location is under-utilized. By changing flows in the sewage system based upon real-time data and real-time control, that municipality has cancelled a costly budgeted new overflow basin saving a vast amount within their infrastructure budget.

If we can get over the hurdle of competing protocols, the next big challenge is improving the communications environment. At the moment platforms are not optimised for the internet of things. This has different requirements in terms of long battery life, low device cost, low deployment cost, extended coverage and service support.

Technology is evolving rapidly to meet these needs.  I-Real has fully embraced the introduction of LPWAN [Low Power Wide Area Networking] and has currently water data loggers available for both LoRa [an IoT enabled wireless standard designed for low power and long range] and Sigfox [a French specialist IoT communications provider].

Preparations are already made for evolving platforms including  NB-IOT/LTE-M [narrow band internet of things/long term evolution machine to machine] and RPMA [random phase multiple access] and I-Real expects to have these products available in 2017 as telecom operators will roll out these new technologies.

These new kind of network technologies will be optimized for machine connectivity with low power usage and extensive network coverage.

Once these networks are operational, the number of connected objects will increase rapidly as costs for communications service will be reduced by half or more in the next year in comparison to current 3G cellular connections.

A connected water infrastructure, with low cost communications and proprietary protocols incorporated in a seamless system, all supervised and controlled in I-Real H2gO software platform, the smart future will really start.

It won’t just change the way that water services are managed. It will also facilitate new business models for suppliers to the water industry.

Pump manufacturers, for example, will no longer sell hardware: they will be able to sell pumping as a service charging e.g. by cubic metre of water moved.

I-Real is and will remain predominantly a software service provider with hardware tools such as dataloggers, sensors and programmed PLCs to enable true monitoring and control solutions. It is building a global partner network to further expand its business. Partners are a mixture from players in the object market (e.g. pump manufacturers), the telecom market (e.g.IoT SPs) and the maintenance market (the local maintenance company).

All bring their value to the market and combining this with I-Real`s technology and experience will enable further savings and new business models in the water industry. 

Simon van den Dries heads the International business of I-Real out of The Netherlands. I-Real is founded in 2003 and is leader in the Netherlands for integrated water resource management through its H2gO software and  RealSense hardware. I-Real was founded in 2003 as a project   to design and implement a monitoring and control system for various water chain objects, including weirs, locks and pumping stations for a large water board in the Netherlands.

He argues connecting water objects to the internet of things is at the heart of Water’s digital future. Competing protocols have created a big obstacle, although evolving communications platforms represent a fantastic opportunity.

Contact:

Simon van den Dries

s.vandendries@i-real.com