Telecommunications giant Vodafone is eyeing up the water utility market as its next big target to deploy internet of things (IoT) based technology.
The company has been working with utilities to test out its NarrowBand (NB)-IoT solution to help connect water infrastructure and gather more data to help improve daily operations.
Speaking to WWi magazine on the side-lines of the World Water Tech Summit in London, Adam Armer, IoT global business development & innovation manager at Vodafone, said: “There is a change here [in the water market]. We have new technologies coming into the field which will change how the water industry is going to manage itself, how it will address customers and how it will be more efficient with the resources that it has.”
While Vodafone has built up experience with utilities in the electricity and oil and gas markets, with 10 million connections, it is now ready to roll out new IoT networks dedicated to the water market.
Armer added: “This new network is really going to change the way that networks can monitor devices in the field, whether that is smart meters or flow meters, or environmental sensors.”
As well as working with Victorian government utility South East Water in Australia, Vodafone originally started working with Kurita Water Industries in Japan.
Since the 1990s, Kurita started to deploy its S.sensing system to monitor water treatment data remotely, controlling chemical dosing in real-time according to changes in water quality.
Then in 2013 Vodafone IoT partnered with Toshiba to work with Kurita. A secure system was then developed that could “digitally check water conditions in real-time, anywhere in the world”, according to Vodafone.
Meanwhile in Spain, Vodafone has been working with Aguas de Valencia and most recently utility EMASESA, which supplies water to one million people in the city of Seville and surrounding areas.
Carmelo García Santana, innovation manager at EMASESA, told WWi: “Smart water means two things: getting data more frequently with a lot of parameters and converting this data into intelligence...We conducted a test in Seville and the results have been satisfactory for us. We are interested in turning this into a bigger deployment.”
The developments from Vodafone demonstrate how telecommunication and new, software-based companies are entering the global water utility market.
Another example is Chinese firm Huawei, which is working in South Africa with mobile network, MTN, to deploy its NB-IoT solution to transmit data and automatically collect utility meter data.
Nassau WWTP to reduce OPEX by $350k
Nassau County is working with SUEZ to construct the county’s first water recycling facility at the Cedar Creek Water Pollution Control Plant in Wantagh. The project is expected to cost approximately $1.1 million and be completed by January 2019. The cost is expected to result in a net reduction of the plant’s operating expenses by more than $350,000 per year.
By reusing treated plant effluent, the Cedar Creek plant will preserve up to 300 million gallons of groundwater each year. The proposed plant instead will take water from the screened plant effluent system and treat it for solids removal and for high-level, multiple-barrier disinfection using chlorination and ultraviolet disinfection.
Cities are fundamental to lead wastewater reuse, finds report
Major cities around the world are being tasked to lead a “reuse revolution” to dramatically help increase wastewater treatment, reuse and recycling.
With 80 percent of all wastewater discharged into rivers, lakes and oceans untreated, it is leading to health and environmental hazards, while contributing to Greenhouse Gas emissions, according to a new report: Wastewater: The reuse opportunity. The report was launched by the International Water Association and OFID (the OPEC Fund for International Development).
The global market for wastewater recycling and reuse reached nearly $12.2 billion in 2016 and is estimated to reach $22.3 billion by 2021.
The report focuses on eight cities, all facing different water and wastewater challenges and developing different solutions to address them, and which could be applied in other cities:
• Aqaba, Jordan: A mid-size city turning its “zero discharge” challenge into a good opportunity
• Bangkok, Thailand: Using wastewater as a resource and a valuable economic good
• Beijing, China: Building infrastructure to keep up with an ever-expanding mega city
• Chennai, India: Addressing water scarcity through accelerated wastewater reuse
• Durban, South Africa: Treating wastewater as an economic good
• Kampala, Uganda: Protecting its water source with an integrated plan to control, treat and reuse wastewater
• Lima, Peru: Learning by doing under the urgency of shrinking glaciers
• Manila, Philippines: A mega city regenerating resources through wastewater treatment and reuse.
Suleiman J Al-Herbish, director general of OFID, said: “These are all cities in low- or middle-income countries where future challenges will be more acute and the need for change is urgent.”
The director general added: “The report presents city roadmaps and identifies priorities – as well as the benefits – of meeting the Sustainable Development Goal target of halving the proportion of untreated wastewater and substantially increasing recycling and safe reuse by 2030.”
