Gastón Dussaillant of Capta Hydro: Innovating for Irrigators Worldwide

The Innovators

Gastón Dussaillant of Capta Hydro: Innovating for Irrigators Worldwide

A Capta CFT surface water telemetry device installed in a flow-gauging structure in one of the canals of the Maipo Canal Association irrigation distict, just south of Santiago, Chile.

Capta Hydro is a company that embodies the axiom that the closing of one door can allow another to open. Gastón Dussaillant cofounded the company to address one type of water opportunity: hydrokinetic generation in open canals. Although this initial venture proved unsuccessful, it opened his eyes to another opportunity: the need for simple, cost-effective, and durable surface water telemetry and canal gate automation solutions. Seeing the problems with available technology, Capta Hydro developed new telemetry and automation hardware that is accurate, durable, resistant to theft or vandalism, powered by solar energy and that can easily integrate into existing irrigation infrastructure. In this interview, Mr. Dussaillant tells Irrigation Leader about Capta’s origins, the process of developing its telemetry, automation, and software products, and how the company is seeking to promote the better use of surface irrigation water worldwide.

Irrigation Leader: Tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Gastón Dussaillant: I’m Chilean and am currently based in Santiago, Chile. I’ve been an entrepreneur for almost 10 years. Over the last 6 or 7 years, I have partnered with my cofounder, Emilio De La Jara, who is a mechanical engineer and the main inventor of our products. We’ve been keen on developing a technology company to focus on solving environmental problems. First, we tried for almost a year and a half to develop wave energy converters before realizing that we needed more money and time than we realistically could access here. Then we pivoted to micro hydropower for artificial canals. My cofounder had some experience in that field and had done some prototypes with one of the top universities in Chile. That seemed more promising and achievable, considering that there are tons of canals all over the world that represent hydrokinetic potential energy that is not recovered with traditional technologies. We thought we could develop something noninvasive and easy to install that could generate competitive distributed energy. That was the idea on which we founded Capta Hydro in late 2015.

By mid-2017, we had a working pilot, but we realized again that to develop a market-ready product, we needed access to capital willing to take technology risk, which is scare here. We also became aware of other challenges, such as the pressure of decreasing solar energy prices, and realizing that locations with good generation potential and nearby distributed demand were not as common as we initially hoped.

In parallel, we were having conversations with several irrigation district managers and river managers, asking them if they had any data on how much water actually flowed through their canals so that we could estimate and project our power generation potential. We were surprised to learn that they rarely had any data. With one in particular, the Putaendo River Water Association, we thought that this was strange, because we had seen that it had installed around 30 telemetry devices just a few months before. We asked, and the association told us that half had been vandalized and the other half either didn’t work or were imprecise and that the support from the supplier was very poor. The association was really unhappy, since it had obtained around $200,000 in subsidies for this project and invested almost $75,000 of its money.

We did more research and learned that similar things had occurred in many river water associations and irrigation districts around Chile, and that their only alternative was to implement expensive imported solutions, which often needed lots of additional infrastructure and didn’t work as designed because of the high sediment level in our water. We started realizing that this was a potentially more attractive business opportunity, because the problem to solve was so much bigger. We figured that even if we could install 1,000 hydrokinetic turbines and generate 10 megawatts of energy per hour, it would have a marginal effect overall on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, but that if we could install 1,000 high-quality telemetry and canal automation devices, we could have a big effect on how water is distributed and managed in Chile, helping the country adapt to increasing water stress. We then learned that this same issue existed in lots of developing countries and in underserved areas of developed countries. By late 2017, we had decided to focus exclusively on developing solutions for surface water distribution infrastructure, including telemetry, automation devices, and water management software that would allow operators to increase their distribution efficiency and precision and allow optimized, demand-based distribution rather than supply-based distribution and give water users better visibility and control of their surface water

Irrigation Leader: How many employees does the company have?

Gastón Dussaillant: Currently, we have around 20 employees, though that number will probably double in the next 12 months because we are growing fast. We are funded by angel investors in Chile and are looking for venture capital funding later this year to expand internationally and to further develop our solutions.

Irrigation Leader: Did you develop the product from scratch?Gastón

Dussaillant: Yes, it was designed completely from scratch. We didn’t know anything about Internet of Things solutions, canal flow measuring, telemetry, or automation. We knew about hydropower and turbine modeling, but we had to learn everything else. That led us to question every assumption made by existing solutions. The result was our core product, the Capta Canal Flow Telemetry (Capta CFT), a telemetry device designed for measuring flows in surface water, such as canals and rivers. We are applying for a worldwide invention patent for this product. Its simple design solves many of the problems that we observed with other telemetry devices. Essentially, it’s an enclosed safe box, made of antiabrasive and almost tank-grade steel, which is securely installed on a canal wall or flow gauging structure with steel anchors. The standard model has an antenna on top and a solar panel in one of its faces, protected by an antiimpact polycarbonate, and all the electronics, batteries, and sensors are secure inside. The device sends around 1 data point per minute to our Capta AMARU software, which is available both in web and mobile versions, allowing users to see real-time water levels, flows, and volumes; configure alerts; obtain data reports; and much more.

The device was designed to be versatile, and different sensors can be installed. The basic version has an ultrasonic sensor, which measures the water level and correlates it with a discharge curve in a flow-gauging structure; it can also be used to measure water heights to manage flood or canal levels. Recently, we developed a new version with a radar velocity sensor that can measure superficial water velocity, giving direct water flow measurements in places where a traditional flow-gauging structure cannot be used, for example due to insufficient slope. This device has worked really well, giving 2–3 percent precision readings after calibration. In total, we have around 100 Capta CFT devices installed for about 30 customers in Chile, mainly irrigation districts but also some final water users, and one device in the 014 Río Colorado Irrigation District in Baja California, Mexico, which has been operating perfectly for almost a year and a half. Our customers were skeptical about our product at first, because when they had tried other devices, they had been stolen within a few weeks, but after 24 months and a few unsuccessful theft attempts, our device has performed as expected. All in all, we’ve had more than 30,000 accumulated device-days with no theft events.

Irrigation Leader: You mentioned that the basic Capta CFT measures water level. Does it need to be set to the parameters of the particular canal?

Gastón Dussaillant: It depends. Some customers only use it to measure water levels as a flood alert device, but in order to get flow measurements, you have to install the device on a flow-gauging structure and upload the discharge curve to our software. A big advantage of our solution is that these structures are common in Chile, the United States, and elswhere around the world. Normally, someone would have had to go there in person once or twice a day to look at how much water there is, but with our solution, you can easily bring the infrastructure live to constantly report water flow and level.

Irrigation Leader: Why do people want to steal these devices?

Gastón Dussaillant: Sometimes only because they can, other times because they want to resell the batteries or the solar panels, even though they’re not worth that much. In a few cases, however, water users vandalize the devices because they benefit from the status quo and don’t want their water use measured. Vandalism and theft can be expensive problems that really make customers think twice about a potential investment. We have talked to potential customers in Mexico who invested around $700,000 in 15 automatic gates from another supplier that were vandalized within 2 weeks.

Irrigation Leader: What part does education play in your sales efforts?

Gastón Dussaillant: Educating and raising the awareness of both potential customers and the general public is definitely part of our effort. We want surface water users, particularly farmers, who at least in Chile have only recently started to worry about distribution efficiency, to realize that investments in improving surface water distribution management through telemetry and automation at the river and the irrigation-district levels can be highly productive and lucrative. Any increase in efficiency in those big volumes translates to lots of additional water for them. For example, we have a project in Chile that involves the installation of our telemetry and canal gate automation devices in 10 canal outtakes of a river. The project will potentially help the river water association to improve its distribution precision by 15 percent, which would have meant an additional 50 million cubic meters (40,536 acre-feet) in 2019, our driest season in almost 60 years, when the river was at 25 percent of normal levels. That’s the same volume of water as would have been provided by a dam project that the water users there have been waiting for for more than 50 years. It’s a much faster, more cost-efficient alternative.

Irrigation Leader: Would you tell us about your pilot program with California State University, Fresno?

Gastón Dussaillant: We are in conversation with Fresno State and the Fresno Irrigation District to pilot our new, low-cost device. That said, we are also looking for other irrigation districts that may be interested in piloting our Capta CFT telemetry device. One of its key advantages is that it is really easy to transport and install. After checking for general requirements (canal wall thickness, solar or grid energy, cellular signal), a team of two with a simple power tool and remote instruction from our side can have it installed and functioning within an hour, all at a fraction of the cost of a traditional telemetry station. In most cases, no change in infrastructure is needed.

Irrigation Leader: Do you travel to see your clients in person?

Gastón Dussaillant: Yes, we traveled a lot initially to really understand the problem we were solving and to develop the products. Recently, we have traveled more to execute projects, given that movement in Chile has been greatly restricted due to the COVID‐19 pandemic. Our plan for the United States, after our initial pilots, is to initially travel for a few months to visit customers and learn as much as possible about their challenges and priorities, and then to find a local representative with whom we can partner and whom we can train on all aspects of our solutions, including installation and support.

Irrigation Leader: Are the telemetry unit and the canal gate automation unit sold both separately and as a package?

Gastón Dussaillant: Exactly. Sometimes, you need to measure first, then decide what you need to change, and then install control technology. The fact that we sell these units separately makes the implementation of these solutions much more modular and cost effective.

The installation of our canal gate automation device is much simpler than other approaches, because we automate existing canal gates and don’t need additional infrastructure. We also generally don’t need the canal to stop, so installation is much faster.

We’re also working on automatic flow delivery, meaning that eventually the canal gate will be able to be correlated to a downstream or upstream telemetry device and will be able to operate automatically to deliver a certain flow, maintain a certain water level, or deliver a certain volume.

A Capta CFC canal automation device installed on two canal gates at the Melado Irrigation District in the Maule Region, Chile.

Irrigation Leader: Where outside Chile are you active?

Gastón Dussaillant: We have been active in Mexico since late 2019, but Mexico was one of the countries hardest hit by COVID‐19, so all our plans were pushed back a year. In a sense, it was a good thing, because it gave us time to optimize our solutions. Now, we’re starting up conversations with an important water management research center in Mexico that will help us implement a nationwide program of 10 or 20 pilots in the country’s key basins. As I mentioned earlier, we are also looking to install multiple pilots of our Capta CFT device in the United States and South America this year.

Irrigation Leader: What are Capta’s other top issues today?

The Capta AMARU water distribution management program, showing water level, flow, and hourly volume.

Gastón Dussaillant: What really got this company going and made a space for us in the market were our innovative telemetry and canal gate automation devices, which are resistant to theft, fast and easy to implement, and generally significantly cheaper than alternatives. Those devices have lots of advantages, but they are still just tools to obtain data or to act on those data. Our primary focus from now on will be on developing software and tools to extract the maximum value from those data for our customers. We’re building a first-class software team and developing software that’s not a closed hub but can be integrated with different data sources and is useful for different stages of surface water distribution. We are working on solutions for the automatic calculation of flow and volume allocations according to water rights in rivers and irrigation districts, to enable a more efficient and precise water market and to detect water losses between different elements of a distribution structure. Those are the kinds of things that will translate into real efficiency gains and more value to our customers, both for surface water distribution infrastructure operators and final water users.

Irrigation Leader: What is Capta Hydro’s vision for the future?

Gastón Dussaillant: Surface water accounts for around 70 percent of water withdrawals for human use, and the infrastructure to distribute it is extensive and spread around the world, but in many senses, it’s been underserved and is largely invisible. In most of the world, this infrastructure is managed in the same way it has been for the last 50 years, depending exclusively on on-terrain personnel, even though we are 30 years into the internet era. When we considered the facts that this infrastructure can suffer losses of up to 70 percent and that a large portion of these losses can be explained by poor management, we realized that improving the efficiency of this infrastructure can be an important measure for mitigating the negative effects of climate change and water scarcity. By conserving and optimizing water for human use and nature, we can improve lives around the world. That’s our biggest motivation.

The number of telemetry and canal gate automation devices needed for this task is at least two or three orders of magnitude higher than the number implemented right now. We’re developing the technology to enable surface water distribution infrastructure customers to do that in a reliable and cost-effective manner. This technology will be around for 10–20 years or more, and our company will consistently develop new solutions to enable them to further improve their surface water distribution. That’s why we see ourselves as a global company. Chile is a relatively small country with only 1 million hectares (2.47 million acres) of irrigated crops. We see real potential to deploy our solutions in 100 million hectares (247 million acres) in 15 key countries around the world, of which the United States is a top priority. Ideally, we want to launch in 15 countries in the next 3–5 years.

Irrigation Leader: Is there anything you would like to add?

Gastón Dussaillant: We’re open to having conversation with potential partners, water associations, and irrigation districts all around the country that are interested in piloting our Capta CFT surface water telemetry device during the 2021 irrigation season or beyond. The first customers to sign up will be able to purchase the product at a discount. My invitation to infrastructure operators and final water users is to think of a key part of their water infrastructure where they need real-time water flow data and to reach out. We are looking forward to meeting them, learning about their water challenges and delivering value.

Gastón Dussaillant is one of the cofounders and the chief commercial officer of Capta Hydro. He can be reached at gaston@captahydro.com.