Welsh Water is installing 250 new digital “smart” meters in Grangetown, Cardiff – with plans for another 3,000 to be fitted over the next three months – as part of an EU-funded water usage project involving partners from across Europe.

The meters will measure water usage wirelessly at selected properties in Cardiff, sending information back to the customers every hour so that they can monitor how much they are using, see peak usage times and help manage their household utility costs. The information also gets sent back to Welsh Water who will be able to detect if any leaks or bursts have occurred at the property and get the leak repaired much more quickly, reducing wastage and saving customers money.

Andy Blackhall, Water Demand Manager at Welsh Water said: 

“In our recent customer engagement surveys, customers have informed us that they would like to see us trialling new and innovative ways to help reduce the demand for water, and to help customers manage their bills.”

“We will use the results of the trial to help inform our future long-term business planning activity, and ensure we understand fully the costs and benefits of delivering a world-class service to our customers.”

“All customers in the Grangetown trial will be offered a free water efficiency and usage survey, along with installation of free water saving products, such as a water butt or more efficient shower head where required.”

The new smart metres will be the latest innovation used by Welsh Water in a bid to reduce costs and keep customers’ bills low. Reducing wastage is one of the company’s top priorities with leakage rates halved since the early 1990s from 400 megalitres per day (Ml/d) to around 180 Ml/d. Welsh Water find and fix around 26,000 leaks a year .

The smart meter trial is part of a wider EU funded WISDOM project - Water Analytics & Intelligent Sensing For Demand Optimised Management - which has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration.

As part of the project funded the utility came together with ARAD Water Metering Group under the direction of UK Director Simon Ogden and The City of Cardiff Council  to implement SMART Metering.  As part of this ARAD sent their signal specialist Moti Reuben from their headquarters in Israel to help survey the Cardiff Pilot Area for the best signal setup.

The WISDOM project has developed and tested an intelligent ICT system that enables "just in time" actuation and monitoring of the water value chain from water abstraction to discharge, in order to optimise the management of water resources.

Other WISDOM pilots undertaken in Wales include:

• A study of WISDOM's applicability to the problem of optimizing clean water networks by attempting to optimize, in real time, pumping schedules and service reservoir levels so as to reduce energy consumption.
• How WISDOM can enable the application of data driven modelling techniques to water network data – the specific focus in the trial was predicting the occurrence of combined sewer overflows (CSOs) in waste water networks.

Click here for more information about the WISDOM project