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Elimination of OPEX spend by water co's when monitoring potable water infrastructure - replace the battery power source with a long-live energy harvester
About
Battery powered monitoring systems are commonplace on the potable water network. They are reliable devices and widely deployed. However, they have drawbacks. Battery replacement leads to an everlasting OPEX legacy of cost and waste disposal. Most measure only water pressure. Lastly, long intervals between data transmissions are required to ensure a reasonable battery life. We aim to address this issue by replacing the battery with a long-life energy harvester, working off the flow of water. Generally, the industry wants more data and quality data, leading to informed decisions – the familiar ‘Big Data’ mantra. Achieving this at reasonable cost is the driving force behind this project. As the name infers, Big Data requires a mass of data to function - greater volumes and varieties of data. Obtaining a mass of data from a large and inscrutable network of underground pipes without adding to the OPEX burden is the challenge we have addressed.
Key Benefits
The team has developed a novel energy harvester which can be deployed 'live' into the infrastructure: - Energy output of around 240 mW at 2m/S (100mm ø pipe). Sensors: - Sensor array (Pressure, Flow and Turbidity) attached to the EH unit support structure RF comms: - LoRa - a low power requirement RF data link from the data origination point (the logger chamber) to a data gateway up to 10km away These critical Innovations give the unit a predicted service life of more than 15 years, and sufficient power surplus to achieve a very fast data refresh rate in emergency mode.
Applications
- The energy harvester can be used as a battery replacement on existing water data loggers - device