Water meters: hybrid solutions from WaterTech
For all those utilities that prefer to continue relying on established traditional mechanical technology, WaterTech has developed a complete range of hybrid smart solutions. The combination of reliable mechanical meters, which now boast more than a decade-long success story, and advanced electronic communication modules, results in water meters that comply with current water management policies, preserving a precious asset like water. WaterTech provides a comprehensive portfolio of innovative hybrid water meters that enable utilities to implement efficient and sustainable smart metering systems.
WaterTech offers a wide range of water meters that express Italy’s long tradition and historic manufacturing excellence in precision mechanics and metrology. Exceptional measurement accuracy, top-notch construction quality and careful selection of materials, combined with extremely advanced electronic communication modules, result in hybrid water meters with high and reliable performance. Another advantage of these solutions is that they can be adapted for mounting even in particularly critical environmental settings.
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In addition to the very popular single-jet or multi-jet turbine meters, all with different dial protection (dry or wet), the range is completed with rotary piston volumetric meters. The offering includes large-gauge industrial meters, so-called Woltmann meters, suitable for flow measurement in industrial, commercial, and agricultural settings, as well as solutions for hot water measurement.
All our models can be equipped with remote reading and remote management systems that can also be applied to water meters already placed on the network. These are hybrid systems that allow remote reading of consumption, as well as a great deal of valuable information and possible activation of alarms and other monitoring. In other words, our hybrid meters can be connected to both data transmission and remote control systems, identically to what is possible with SONATA and OCTAVE.
Although they do not have the innumerable advantages provided by static electronic ultrasonic meters, hybrid meters can also be considered smart meters. They have more advanced functionality than traditional analog meters, and, consequently, can serve as the basis of a sophisticated smart metering system.
ARERA, advocating the renewal of the architecture of distribution networks with remote reading or remote management systems to incentivize greater control of the aqueduct system and more careful safeguarding of the water asset, allows hybrid meters to be adopted as a tool for metering and implementation of a smart metering network.
WaterTech has combined the absolute excellence of mechanical metering with which it has established itself in the international market over the years, with a first-rate electronic technology that possesses solidity of performance and completeness of network protocols. On the strength of this variety of solutions, utilities can build water networks capable of modulating to the specificities of territories and the different criticalities of users.
HYBRID WATER METERS
Mechanical meters that feature a radio for communication as an electronic add-on attached to the meter body, or in which the traditional mechanical clockwork has been replaced by electronics integral to the radio transmission system, are defined as hybrids. They are considered de facto forerunners of static electronic smart meters and are also called first-generation smart meters, because through smart communication equipment information can be collected and transmitted for later processing by the control center. As with all smart meters, hybrid water meters are in fact enabling tools for smart metering systems.
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Extensive experience in water networks, traditional metering, and communication electronics has enabled WaterTech to design hybrid water meters characterized by high performance, accuracy, and placement flexibility.
WaterTech’s turbine water meters, Sirius, Pegasus, and Polaris, are the world’s highest performing water meters, boasting measurement accuracy unmatched in the field of impeller meters. Reaching up to R400, these turbine meters provide superior performance to many ultrasonic meters offered on the market.
This boosted measurement capability stems from the fact that WaterTech has always considered the metrological aspect as a key element: data quality is of absolute importance to ensure the smooth operation of the entire smart metering chain. A system that perfectly transmits and processes incorrect data is a totally useless system.
WaterTech’s mechanical water meters can be equipped with different add-on electronics solutions (integrated or flush) to make sure that they can adapt to multiple mounting and usage conditions.
The quality of the onboard electronics also plays an important role. If the meter measures perfectly but then the data communication to the DAQ does not take place in the correct way and time, once again, we end up with a totally useless smart metering system.
Great variety has been given to communication protocols so that they can interface with existing networks without the need to create new gateways. All WaterTech mechanical meters can be integrated with transmission modules using a wide variety of communication technologies: NB-IoT, LoRa WAN, 169 MHz, 868 MHz.
WATER METER: WATERTECH SOLUTIONS FOR DISTRIBUTORS
Our decades of experience in water meters enabled us to create customized solutions for the different environmental contexts in which water meters are placed. Often, the same operator has to control a distribution network that unravels in textremely dissimilar territories in type and density.
WaterTech offers an extremely diverse hybrid water meter proposal and further succeeds in customizing models and adapting them to specific needs. The result is a smart network designed and optimized with an ideal cost-benefit ratio.
WATER METER WITH BUILT-IN OR FLUSH ADD-ON
The most common type of add-on is the integrated add-on, which consists of attaching transmitting electronics directly above the meter. The integrated add-on is particularly convenient because it has no exposed wires.
However, it is not uncommon for a water meter to be placed in locations that make network communication difficult or that do not provide sufficient space. Basements, cellars, flooded or cramped manholes are the places for which mechanical meters are often intended. In such situations, managing the integrated electronic add-on and critical information transmission issues can be a challenge for utilities and water meter manufacturers.
In response to this need, WaterTech has designed remote reading devices that can be placed far away from the meter body but remain connected by a wire: so-called wire add-ons. The separation of the transmitting module reduces the physical footprint of the water meter (especially in height) and allows the communication module to be placed in a position more conducive to communication activity.
The two solutions should not necessarily be understood as alternatives, but rather as complementary. Where there is sufficient space and where signal quality is good, the integrated solution is the more cost-effective one. In areas where the integrated add-on is too bulky or which are very disadvantaged from a transmission point of view, the wired version is to be preferred.
WATER METER NETWORK PROTOCOLS
The entire range of hybrid water meter devices is available with all major communication protocols used in smart water metering: NB-IoT, LoRa WAN, 169 MHz, 868 MHz.
The broad solution portfolio includes:
- AMR (Automatic Meter Reading) and OMR (Offside Meter Reading) systems: these are communication technologies that require human action in order to teleread water meters, i.e., Walk-by / Drive-by.
- AMI (Automated/Advanced Metering Infrastructure) systems: these are transmission technologies that do not involve any human intervention for remote reading, the so-called Fixed Network.
- Mixed AMI – OMR systems: these are systems in which Fixed Network and Walk-by / Drive-by transmission coexist and integrate with each other to achieve full remote management of the entire meter fleet; WaterTech offers mixed solutions with 169 MHz transmission modules and LoRa WAN + 868 MHz combination.
Static electronic ultrasonic smart meters represent the second generation and natural evolution of hybrid water meters. The absence of moving parts, the incredible measurement accuracy of ultrasonic technology, and the increased resistance to impurities make them the benchmark for efficient water networks.
Over the past few years, we have sold more than 250,000 hybrid water meters in Italy, which makes WaterTech the clear market leader in this segment. The success we have had demonstrates that the sum of traditional, top-quality mechanical meters and high-performance transmission electronics can be an attractive route for distributors. While believing that ultrasonic static technology is the future of metering, WaterTech continues to maintain that the hybrid water meter remains a useful and effective solution, especially for some specific uses, and cannot be considered an obsolete solution.
