Demo case #4: Smart Meters and Customers (United Kingdom)

 

 

 

Context: South West Water (SWW) the Water Utility for the South West of the UK, is interested to engage with behavioural science experts to implement innovative approaches that empower customers towards water efficiency, intending to become the first Water Company in the UK using FIWARE to exploit the capabilities of smart meters for feedback to the customers and increasing water saving awareness.

Challenges: The Great Torrinton pilot consists of one District Metered Area (DMA) serving a population of circa 5000 people. The existing infrastructure relevant to the proposed platform includes circa 2,000 smart meters (2018, with more being installed), flow and pressure meters at the entrance of the DMA, and a data transmission/ management system.

The smart meter data is collected at 15-min intervals and transmitted twice daily. Telemetry data (flow and pressure) is collected and transmitted at hourly intervals. At present, there are historical records for a 3-year period. As part of its business planning process, SWW is interested to timely communicate with the customers to raise awareness and engage them in water efficiency practices. The pilot will coordinate with SWW to acquire all information on customer engagement and participation relevant to the pilot’s objectives towards smart water management.

Role of Fiware4Water: The main ambitions include: (i) demonstration of existing and innovative IoT/smart technologies oriented to applications in urban smart water management, as part of a “green” smart city movement, including interoperability issues; (ii) water demand awareness and custom advice for increasing water efficiency on the customer side; (iii) improvement of leakage and pressure management based on smart meters; (iv) burst and water quality (e.g. discolouration) alerting, taking into account also smart meters and interaction with customers, (v) high visualisation (3D) techniques for operational management and for customer interaction. FIWARE applications will be developed demonstrating (i) the application of innovative smart meters, linked to the FIWARE platform for interoperability and data exchange ; (ii) big data analytics and development of modules, compatible with FIWARE, for interaction with customers at household level and with the utility, to provide information, feedback and motivation to customers, taking into account the long term existing data from smart meters ; (iii) introduction of 3D high visualisation techniques to show data/results from the smart meters to the utility; (iv) introduction and implementation of customer engagement methodologies from a social sciences perspective (building co-consensus/WP5); (v) introduction and implementation of customer engagement techniques from the ICT side with Serious Gaming, again compatible with FIWARE.

 

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