Siemens Metering Services
No danger of soggy Chips
It’s not just an outstanding landmark, Manchester’s Chips building is hiding some remarkable technology that makes it one of the smartest buildings in the city: it can tell you if it springs a leak.
In 2011 the building was installed with a ground-breaking smart metering system that has the possibility to:
- Read its own water meters
- Measure water consumption in real time
- Communicate breakdowns and leaks as soon as they occur
The system was built and installed by Power Plus Communications (PPC), the world’s leading supplier of Broadband Power Line (BPL) communications systems, in partnership with Siemens Metering Services.
A combination of modems and gateways collect information about water usage from the building's many water meters, and transfer it to the building’s power cables. From there it is uploaded to the power grid using standard broadband protocols over existing power lines.
The data is used by Siemens Metering Services to read the meters remotely, not just to track costs and measure consumption, but also to look out for any unexpected results that might indicate a water leak or a blocked pipe.
Data from water meters is transferred to the building’s power cables, sending information across the power grid to where it can be read remotely by the system’s operators.
“This pilot demonstrates the ability of the technology to help water utilities move from conventional metering to a smart Infrastructure.”
Ian Sykes, Siemens MCS Global Headquarters Product Group
Overcoming the high rise challenge
Using a combination of technologies, PPC found a solution to a number of challenges that typically affect Smart Metering in high rise environments. Systems that rely solely on 3G technology, for instance, can encounter problems where the meters are below ground level, or surrounded by metal pipes and structures. LAN and fibre-optic solutions involve expensive and time-consuming rewiring. And with hundreds of meters transmitting data from the same location, wireless and radio signals can under-perform.
PPC used a combination of radio and 3G signals to bridge gaps, but the core of the system relies on the transfer of broadband data over existing power lines, making it very robust, reliable and cost-effective. As a result, each meter's data can be read separately and clearly, and in near real-time.
Seamless installation
The system monitors 142 water meters around the Chips building. The whole system was installed without any disruption to the building’s occupants, because the devices were connected to cabling in the basement and hallways rather than directly to meters within each household. Each gateway device took just a couple of minutes to connect without any need to switch off power or water supplies.
Within hours, data from the meters began to be available to be read in near real-time by the system's operators.
In the event of a leak, for instance, the anomalous data can be quickly identified and narrowed down to a specific meter, and a repair team dispatched to the right part of the building as quickly as possible. It's even possible to reconfigure the components of the system remotely, without sending an engineer to the site. Regular meter reading can also be done remotely, without inconvenience to the householders or costs to the utility.
The metering system has been in success operation since autumn of 2011.