In Adyar zone, digital meters fixed for commercial consumers of metro water
Posted on: 07/Sep/2019 9:40:22 AM
In Chennai, water is now regarded very precious and many efforts have been carried out to save water from getting wasted.
It is now said that for the purpose of preventing water wastage digital meters have been fixed in the Adyar zone by the department of metro water. Point to be noted is this fixing of digital metes has been done for high value commercial consumers (establishments that consume more than 5 lakh litres of water in a month). Soon, water charges would have to be paid by the establishments like hospitals and educational institutions depending on their consumption.
For the completion of digital meter fixing in the Adyar zone, a time period of 6months has been set as deadline now. It was mentioned by a senior official belonging to metro water department that old meters would be replaced and the process would be extended to bulk consumers in 14 other zones in Chennai Corporation. This process is regarded as prelude to the fixing of meters for the domestic consumers. There are totally 12708 bulk consumers and 160 have been fitted with the smart meters.
The existing meters were installed long time back is known. It must be noted that to collect date from the existing meters workers belonging to CMWSSB, popularly known as metro water had to enter the sumps at the establishments concerned. It is known that these sumps are ill maintained and dingy. Information revealed was the chances of errors creeping during the tedious process had led to the decision to go for smart meters. The advantage of digital meters or smart meters is they leave little room for errors.
These new smart meters got from France use long range gateways for collecting and sending data to metro water servers. It must be noted that these smart meters were based on the system using radiofrequency waves for automated reading.
It was nearly a month back the water agency began the process of fixing state-of-art meters and the agency would fix another 700 smart meters in the commercial establishments in the selected zone. By the end of September, the second consignment of 10,000 meters would arrive. Necessary groundwork has been carried out to make sure that there would not be any issue when the system becomes operational.
It is worthy to note that sometime back prototype of smart meters was received from France and it was sent to Fluid Control Research Institute located at Palakkad in Kerala. Then, it was run through variety of checks and calibrated. Later the final seal of approval was issued by the institute. Only after this, the MWD imported the first batch of smart meters from France. It must be noted that the activists have also been insisting on the metering system to prevent water wastage.
