Tekniska Verken Kiruna is replacing all their mechanical water meters with smart meters and a mobile meter reading system from Kamstrup. Their new metering solution will improve their efficiency and provide the basis for future optimisations.
Kiruna Municipality, located at the very top of Northern Sweden, is characterised by an extreme contrast between its desolate wilderness and the growing and developed Kiruna town. Out of the approximately 23,000 inhabitants, about 18,000 live in Kiruna town while the rest live more scattered in small villages and remote areas across its 20,000 square kilometres. Tekniska Verken Kiruna (TVAB) is responsible for all water meters in Kiruna municipality. In 2015, the company started exchanging their old mechanical water meters in the Jukkasjärvi area with new ultrasonic meters that are read remotely using mobile reading.
As a result of the rather unique geographical conditions in TVAB’s enormous supply area, they have a constant focus on being as efficient as possible in order to keep down costs. The upgrade was, therefore, a result of the company’s efforts to improve their meter reading efficiency.
Lennart Töyrä, TVAB, Sweden
The new water meters provide a number of benefits compared to their mechanical counterparts. Intelligent alarms in the ultrasonic meters enable TVAB to detect errors such as leaks, reverse flows and other irregularities, which reduces the water loss in their distribution network. “It’s the intelligence that makes all the difference,” says Lennart Töyrä, Meter Manager at the Department of Water and Wastewater at TVAB.
The new meters also allow fast and simple remote reading minimising the time the company spends on reading and handling meter data. With Kamstrup’s remote reading system, READy, TVAB employees can simply drive around the supply area collecting meter data automatically via the READy app and a concentrator – without having to inconvenience their customers. This is especially useful for holiday houses or places that are difficult or dangerous to access.
With the old mechanical meters, TVAB was dependent on their customers to manually read their own meters, fill out annual meter reading cards and send them to TVAB. In addition to being a hassle for customers, the manual approach to meter reading is inefficient, says Lennart Töyrä: “30% of our customers never send in their card and out of the ones that do, another 30% are unusable due to errors or inaccuracies.”
Also, TVAB does not know the exact time where the meters are read. “With remote reading, we know the exactly when the meters are read and everything is timestamped and reported back to us.”
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