Councils look to central control for savings

The drought that has affected a significant portion of Australia, along with the projected long-term impacts of climate change on water supply, have prompted local councils to review their irrigation infrastructure and scheduling technologies.

The answer for many has been to upgrade their controllers so that they are managed centrally and can be accessed by qualified staff from anywhere at any time.

Councils are finding that the savings in upgrading equipment are significant. Staff can manage all irrigation systems from the works depot or a remote location rather than travelling to each site. This is a significant saving in staff time and fuel. Weather data can be incorporated in scheduling software, resulting in irrigation water savings. The technology also detects and can alert managers in real time of the location of problems such as a water leak or equipment failure allowing them to be dealt with promptly and before they cause even bigger issues.

The City of Melton, located in Melbourne’s west and one of the fastest growing municipalities in Australia, is an example of a council that is seeing the benefits of upgrading its control network.

The city has a commitment to deliver higher standards of sporting fields, in part as a result of pressure from users and rate payers for better facilities.

While the council already had stand-alone controllers across 50 sites, it decided to invest in a more efficient way of managing its irrigation network by installing a central control system that would be managed by its parks and gardens contractor Citywide Services.

Melton City Council approached Hunter to develop a solution for a better way to manage its irrigation network. Having already installed standalone Hunter ICC controllers in over 50 sites, the council sought an affordable, central control system for their contractor, Citywide Services.

They settled on retrofitting a Hydrawise facepack for the original ICC controllers, allowing a cost-effective upgrade to a Wi-Fi based central control system. One of the big advantages was that installation was completed with minimal fuss and downtime.

Leigh Stewart, Sportsfields and Irrigation Supervisor, and his staff at Citywide run the system for council from their mobile phones, saving time driving to sites and monitoring all irrigation events on a regular basis.

Some sites have also been converted to a hybrid decoder and conventional wire system. Using existing wire looms, decoders were added, and the old system brought online.

The result for the council has been that its sports grounds and parklands are better irrigated and monitored, while for contractors there is more time to carry out general irrigation maintenance and preventative maintenance, which means no system is down during critical periods.

In the final analysis, residents and sports ground users are the big winners in the City of Melton.

Acknowledgment. Article provided by Hunter Industries.

An upgrade to central control has resulted in big time and labour savings for the City of Melton.

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