Repeaters for remote reading of water meters in Ystad municipality
Customer:
The Water and Sewerage unit in Ystad Municipality is responsible for the operation of waterworks, treatment plants, and pipe networks. The unit has just over 35 employees who are committed to creating sustainable water and sewerage solutions. Over several years, significant investments have been made to modernize and develop the municipality's water services. These investments place the municipality at the forefront of the water and sewerage sector, ahead of other municipalities that have yet to carry out similar expansions. A large part of the water meter reading in Ystad Municipality is now done automatically through remote reading. PiiGAB has supplied wM-Bus repeaters that contribute to the high level of automation.
Background:
In 2011, Ystad Municipality took the first steps to start replacing mechanical water meters, which customers read themselves, with digital water meters and remote reading. For a few years, this was done as tests. Starting in 2015, a broader deployment of smart water meters began among a couple of hundred larger consumers.
There are many advantages to remote reading that the Water and Sewerage unit wanted to utilize. Some examples include reduced administration, more reliable billing data, and the ability to detect leaks and anomalies at an early stage. The remotely read water meters chosen by Ystad Municipality are equipped with integrated communication, enabling easy remote reading via both drive-by and network using various communication methods such as wireless M-Bus.
In 2015, remote reading was mainly done by drive-by. Four years later, the municipality decided to switch to remotely read meters for virtually all water and sewerage customers.
The Challenge:
Taking the step from manual meter reading to automatic remote reading can involve various challenges. This was also the case for the Water and Sewerage unit in Ystad. One of these was to make the most of the municipality’s existing infrastructure, including sewage pumping stations, pressure boosting stations, and water towers, when expanding the network for water meter reading. Many of these locations have fiber and electricity installed, so the Water and Sewerage unit could smoothly install solutions to connect a large number of meters to the collection unit via repeaters and M-Bus communication.
The Solution:
When the municipality decided in 2019 to replace virtually all mechanical water meters, it also meant a strategic and technical challenge. Remote reading would also need to be done in places without access to electricity and fiber, where installing electricity and fiber would be too expensive.
At PiiGAB, we are pleased to collaborate with Ystad Municipality’s Water and Sewerage unit. It is exciting to be part of such a proactive and well-thought-out initiative to replace manual meter reading with remote reading. Not all municipalities have managed this transition without disruptions.
We are convinced that with repeaters, we can often help ensure secure and interference-free communication between water meters and collection units!
