How did Vitens reveal possible leakage of 3 million cubic metres of water?

Vitens N.V. serves around 5.9 million inhabitants, the Netherlands’ largest drinking water company. In 2022 it delivered 348 million m3 of drinking water through 93 treatment plants and about 50,000 km of pipes. One long-term mission, driven by a robust innovation program, is to realize a 100% sustainable drinking water system by 2030 with 100L of water consumption per consumer per day.

Smart DMA stands for Smart Meters in a District Metered Area (DMA).

After several small, smart water metering pilot projects, Vitens wanted to scale up its research. So the company launched Smart DMA, says Eelco Trietsch, Infrastructure Specialist and Smart DMA Program Manager at Vitens. The company looked for insights and experience in several areas: from installations to operations and making the collected data available for research in water quality, water savings, leak detection, customer interaction and more.

The Smart DMA project was done in Leeuwarden’s Westeinde neighbourhood in Friesland province. Here, Vitens installed over 1400 Kamstrup Multical®21 digital drinking water meters (with a wireless M-Bus network and the READy meter reading system), along with real-time water quality sensors, actuators and other technologies.

“Thanks to Smart DMA, we became aware of leakages at our customers,” says Micha van Aken, Business Development Manager at Vitens. “We found that around 1-2% of our customers have a leak of on average five liters per minute. And when you calculate that on the entire Vitens scale, it's approximately 3 million cubic meters of water a year. And that's a lot of water.”

He adds that when Vitens contacted customers about their leak by email or telephone, more than half the leaks were resolved immediately after contact.

Smart DMA allowed Vitens to reconstruct its model for distribution of water throughout the neighborhood using the temperature data from the smart water meters. “By comparing this with the existing network model for this district, we were able to calibrate this model even better,” says Eelco Trietsch. “Smart DMA has ensured that we have become even more convinced of the fact that we need smart water meters to realize our ambitions and the future of our drinking water supply.”

“The Kamstrup meters help us become aware of the actual water consumption during any day of the month,” says Eelco Trietsch. The information will allow Vitens to more accurately forecast demand. Furthermore, he sees potential in using the data to help customers become more aware of their own water consumption. “We can now start a dialogue on how to reduce their consumption, with insights – and how their behaviour compares to their neighbours.”

Micha van Aken says, “To do innovation right, you need the right parties – people like Kamstrup, with the knowledge and also the technology to help you realize your ambition and the vision you have on smart water metering, but also customer service and sustainability. That's really important. You can't do it on your own.”