Introduction
VA SYD is a municipal water company in Southern Sweden processing waste and all types of water sources (drinking-, sewer- and stormwater). The company’s water grid consists of more than 5 000 km of pipe. The oldest section dates back to the 1870s, which presents plenty of future challenges. Apart from an aging pipe grid, the company also needs to plan for other emerging challenges such as changing weather patterns, rising sea levels, and more.
Below you find a summary of the customer use case, click here to skip it and go directly to the video.
What Sensative supplies
At VA SYD, a team tasked with finding new solutions to the company’s challenges has been formed. As the team has been looking at modern technological solutions that can fit their needs, they have come to view IoT solutions as promising implementations to gather data on their issues and find opportunities to solve these.
VA SYD needs
Sensative supplies
The ability to detect water leaks
Through the Yggio platform, customers can freely choose what sensors they want to use and combine, as long as these are not part of a siloed system.
High security standards
The Yggio platform uses the latest security standards and encryption, placing the data entirely in the customer’s hands.
In this instance, VA SYD runs their own instance of Yggio on-premises in their own protected environment to adhere to security demands placed on companies dealing with critical infrastructure.
To control and own their data
The Yggio platform is based on open protocols and never force organizations to store data on any external cloud service. This makes Yggio an ideal choice for any customers who want to be fully in charge of their data.
Through Yggio, the data never leaves the VA SYD’s internal systems.
VA SYD operations cover vast distances with many sensors and thus require long maintenance intervals
VA SYD chose LoRaWAN was for its long-range and low power capabilities.
Yggio was chosen for its support of LoRaWAN, as well as, numerous other protocols that VA SYD uses or might deploy in the future.
98% of sensors to send data at least once a day
The LoRaWAN protocol fit these requirements well; sending small amounts of data at long intervals.
The ability to freely choose between a wide range of IoT devices to use and systems to integrate
As Yggio can broker between so many different protocols, customers can freely choose the best devices for their particular use case without being limited to a specific supplier or technology.
Yggio works as a real-time translator so that data collection, logic, and actions can be performed with a mix of technologies and standards, including different IT systems.
Use case
VA SYD faces many challenges due to its infrastructure, built for a different climate, fewer residents, and other outdated aspects that once helped form the grids design. The company is now seeing many issues arise such as too much water flowing through pipes, water leaks, flooding, and more. As a result, the company wants to analyze several aspects of water flow: how much water flows to different areas, how much water does each resident use, and where are leaks located.
Installing water meters
VA SYD’s initial IoT use case is to install water meters in over 60 000 customers’ households to monitor water consumption in real-time. By doing so, the company can collect valuable data to use themselves and to share with their customers. For the company, this data can be valuable when analyzing and planning how to extend or re-design the pipe infrastructure based on demand and apparent challenges. For the customers, this data can be made accessible through apps or similar to inform them of their water consumption, giving them insights for financial and sustainable decisions.
Water loss prevention
Another issue that the company faces is water losses. As VA SYD loses about 10% of their water during transportation from the primary source (i.e., lake or similar) to the consumers, the company needs solutions that can lower this number. As so much of this water is lost due to leakages in the system, installing water leak detectors is on their list of priorities. A substantial challenge here is finding sensors that can withstand the in-pipe conditions and can communicate remotely from the underground system they are located in.
Mapping water flow in infrastructure
Apart from monitoring water consumption, VA SYD also wish to learn about general water flow in their pipes: What areas have the most intense activity and what areas are at risk of flooding when challenging conditions arise. To learn about the water flow, sensors monitoring pressure levels are a suitable implementation. The company can then analyze the collected data in conjunction with maps of the infrastructure to see what areas are in the most need of increased capacity or re-routing of water flow.
To learn more about VA SYD, visit their website @ www.vasyd.com.
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If you are interested in buying our solutions in this case or need help tailoring a solution for your specific needs, visit our webshop or contact our sales team to evaluate your possibilities and requirements. We are here to help.
