“Thanks to improved metering accuracy, we expect a 2% increase in billed water.”
- Annelies Gebruers from water-link’s Client Contact Center
The challenge:
Inaccurate meters inflate costs
Belgian water utility water-link serves over 640,000 end-users across Antwerp. Until recently, due to a fleet of mechanical water meters, customers were required to manually read their meters and report the value either by mail, online or by phone . But since many never bothered, water-link spent time and resources collecting missing readings and conducting estimate calculations. That meant customers were not billed for their actual consumption and decisions on the utility’s operations weren’t based on accurate data.
The solution
Smart metering saves time and money
Around 160,000 of Kamstrup’s MULTICAL® 21 intelligent water meters have been installed across Antwerp and the entire roll-out of 205,000 meters is expected to be complete by summer 2021. MULTICAL® 21 is the first-ever smart water meter with integrated Sigfox communication, and where necessary, the meters will be installed together with Hydroko’s HydroKonekt smart valve, which also supports Sigfox communication. Thanks to the new smart meters, water-link goes from getting meter data as infrequently as once every two years to receiving values from all meters on a daily basis – a solution that will cut costs and boost revenue.
“We are exploring further automation by building more intelligence into our system. Our goal is to be able to classify the alarms so we can focus on the most critical ones and handle them more efficiently.”
Bert Fabri, water-link Project Engineer
Learn more
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