The Spanish National 5G Plan is launching a pilot project in Valencia, Spain. In the framework of this plan, fifteen pilot projects are being deployed in Valencia to apply new 5G mobile technology in different sectors of the economy, including drinking water.
The water sector’s pilot project focuses on the remote reading of drinking water consumption in real time and the sending of information via the 5G network to a management center for analysis, pricing and processing. The technology company Idrica is working on this project in conjunction with Orange (the project leader) in the city. Other participants include equipment and service providers such as Arborea Intellbird, CFZ Cobots, Etra Investigación y Desarrollo, Visyon (Estudio Bay), Elewit and Robotnik.
This pioneering project, which is scheduled to last around 18 months, involves the remote reading of 30 drinking water meters in different locations on the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia's (UPV) campus. The 5G network will be used to send information to Idrica’s integrated management platform, GoAigua Smart Metering, a solution based on advanced analytics and algorithms. The data obtained will be used to draw conclusions about the capacity of 5G to connect millions of devices in the future, as well as its potential for the early detection of risks and emergencies.
Specifically, says Carlos Tejedor, smart metering and instrumentation specialist at Idrica, "we want to test energy management and network ubiquity. We need excellent sensor communication performance if we are to open the door to future lines of work, where criticality is a key factor. Serious damage to infrastructure can depend on opening or closing a valve; we need communication to be reliable, robust and take a millisecond.”
"To achieve this," he adds, "we will be testing scenarios in which we are able to simulate millions of sensors in one point or in the same area, using different tools, to see if we are capable of managing them. Energy management is also part and parcel of this roadmap, as it is one of the milestones we want to test.”
5G technology is set to be one of the driving forces behind digital transformation in the coming years. According to the Idrica expert, "the transition from 3G to 4G is only noticeable in the fact that we can now send videos and photos to our friends more quickly. By contrast, 5G opens up a whole new range of opportunities, new lines of business, and use cases that were not an option before. We believe that the scale of progress will be disruptive and revolutionary."
SOURCE: Idrica
