Captis provides valuable seasonal insights to Australian water utilities

With thousands of devices deployed across the water sector since mIoT’s inception, the Captis solution has become a staple for utilities and commercial enterprise clients in tracking their water usage, detecting leaks and improving processes with the capability of remote monitoring.

More recently, however, the scalability of Captis has been utilised to full advantage, with one of Australia’s largest water utilities adapting the way its Captis fleet collects data. As a tier one water utility, planning is imperative to determine the requirements of future infrastructure projects. This signified the need for a study observing the seasonal patterns of domestic water usage.

Previously, the tier one water utility would perform customer surveys and implement customer usage diaries to collate seasonal data. However, this method was open to disparities and human error, resulting in less than accurate data and questionable insights.

The Captis Pulse device was chosen for this project, offering a simple installation to existing mechanical water meters across a sample of 2,000 households, with no disruption to water supply. As a custom solution, the fleet of Captis Pulse units were configured with a high-frequency data sampling interval for two-week periods, repeated four times each year (once per season) for five years.

Due to Captis’ over-the-air configuration capability, the water utility is able to easily and remotely reconfigure its devices outside of the study periods and revert the data samples to a lower frequency once again.

At the conclusion of the first year of the study, the water utility was able to use the data collected by Captis to refine its cost estimates and support major infrastructure decisions. The data allowed for clear direction on the size and specifications of water assets selected for new developments, as well as the timing of major works.

In addition to assisting with planning decisions, Captis also identified substantial water loss due to leaks across the water infrastructure. Rectification works were promptly scheduled, saving a significant amount of water and money for the customer and increasing overall customer satisfaction. mIoT CEO, Paul Calabro, said, “This valued customer is now expanding the functionality of its Captis fleet to include ambient air temperature monitoring.

“This will allow it to understand consumption habits even further, by correlating water usage data with daily and seasonal temperature data.

“There really is no limit to the insights Captis can provide. We encourage our customers to engage with our team to uncover tailored solutions we can deliver for their use case applications.”

Established in 2017, mIoT, a Madison Group Enterprises business, is a pioneer in manufacturing cellular-based IoT technology that is able to be employed across a broad range of industries and applications. For more information, visit www.miot.com.au.