PCP for Water Smart Metering

Project Information

SMART.MET

Grant agreement ID: 731996

DOI 10.3030/731996

Closed project

EC signature date 1 December 2016

Start date 1 January 2017

End date 31 January 2022

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)

Total cost € 4 437 937,49

EU contribution € 3 989 643,75

Coordinated by

OFFICE INTERNATIONAL DE L'EAU
France

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SMART.MET (PCP for Water Smart Metering)

Reporting period: 2018-01-01 to 2022-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

European Water utilities operate in a context dealing with socio-environmental issues such as water scarcity and technical-economic issues such as infrastructure aging. Additionally, management of drinking water supply faces additional challenges such as managing capital and operational costs; water loss (also known as non-revenue water) due to leaks and other system failures; and water scarcity/conservation. Traditional water meters are limited in their ability to help utilities address these challenges.

The core of the solution lies in the ability to generate, access and use accurate data that Smart Water Metering can provide to decrease operating costs, identify performance challenges, improve customer service and better prioritize infrastructure investments.

SMART.MET strongly paves the way to more efficient and effective drinking water management, providing for example automatic household meter reading and billing, real time assessment of water balances for leak detection, identification of abnormal behaviours and awareness-raising, and ability to identify user-meters defaults, among other functionalities.

However, the lack of common European standards and lack of “open technological platforms” combined to the high transaction cost on the demand side create a lock-in situation in the market and determine a situation of long-term dependency of water operators on technology providers. This determines high average operating costs for water operators and users, as well as collective inefficiency related to the multiplication of different proprietary solutions on the supply side. The aim of the SMART.MET project, led by a group of 7 water utilities, is to drive the development of new technologies to deal with the collection and management of smart metering data, through a joint Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP). The utilities are supported by 6 expert organizations for assessing the technologies, implement the new procurement procedures and disseminate the outcomes of the project to other utilities and solutions suppliers.

Smart water metering presents itself as an effective solution to the challenges faced by the majority of European water utilities today. Indeed, providing access to accurate data in real-time can help decrease operating costs and prioritize infrastructure investments, while also improving the daily management of networks and customer services.

By launching a PCP procedure, the utilities involved seek to promote demand-driven research into new innovative smart meter solutions that fully cater to the needs of utilities

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the 61 months of the SMART.MET project the following results have been achieved:
• The Project Management Handbook has been published and used as guidance for the implementation. It is based on an Executive board with all partners for strategic decisions and project monitoring; and a Technical Assessment Committee involving experts from all partners, plus a buyers group.
• Preparation and Design: an in-depth analysis of the water utilities needs was conducted and shared with the industry (Open Market Consultation with 95 companies in Spain, Italy, Belgium and Hungary). The needs were translate into functional requirements and prioritized according to a State of the Art analysis. The needs cannot be satisfied by existing solutions. A challenge brief and description of uncovered functionalities were prepared and a Prior Information Notice was published.
• Execution of the PCP: The 3 phases were conducted with success by a lead procurer, acting on behalf of the 7 water utilities
• PCP evaluation: A double assessment was carried out on functional requirements: a self assessment by vendors and a buyers assessment. The PCP process was considered as relevant and effective for developing solutions responding to buyers’ needs. The features provided allowed to assess advanced capabilities and for the buyers to better understand technical constraints for some functionalities poorly covered by vendors (e.g. onsite automatic detection of measurement errors).
• An effective implementation of dissemination and communication activities has been carried out. A wide range of materials have been developed: printed and digital. Partners disseminated results in more than 20 events. Capacity building on PCP process was organised and the final conference attracted more than 140 persons.
• Ethic requirements documentation has been completed in 2017

The PCP allowed buyers to work together on a common problem, defining a set of common requirements, cooperating during the procurement execution, and testing phase, as well as allowing companies to develop advanced features to water metering technologies. The key benefits of the smart water metering solutions are: the accurate detection of leakage after the meter (i.e. on the users’ network); the detection of reverse flow, high level of performance for the data collection platform, stable bidirectional communication with the meters, simplified installation thanks to communication devices integrated in the meter. This will result in more independence of buyers from technological providers, providing tailored information to the consumers on their water bill and finally safeguarding water resources thanks to lower water abstraction for drinking water supply. Buyers have exercised the option to extend the test duration of the solutions newly developed by contractors beyond the duration of the PCP to gain additional knowledge on these solutions and prepare further exploitation, possibly launching a PPI.
Furthermore, the participation in the PCP process allowed utilities to increase their technical know-how, communication networks and required functionalities that will allow them to find appropriate solutions to their needs and better negotiate possible contracts with these or other providers.

In addition, The PCP allowed the companies to better understand the needs of their targeted clients and prepare new generation of smart meters. They developed communication around smart water meters and start to market such products beyond the group of buyers involved in Smart.Met by presenting their development during fairs and publications in technical journals. Thanks to Smart.Met they also initiated collaboration with other companies and research organisations, launched several patent investigations and have prepared marketing strategy to expand their business.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Smart metering allows the processing, transfer and management of data and provides timely consumption information in a highly disaggregated and detailed manner. This facilitates the management of the resources involved, both from the supply side (water providers) and from the demand side (users).

In the water sector, smart metering can lead to more efficient management through automatic reading and billing, real time leak detection, identification of abnormal consumption patterns and detection of failures in user-meters.

Non technical benefits for the water utilities and the technical partners: Cooperation and experience sharing; better understanding of smart metering challenges

Foreseen impacts on public sector modernization are: management of meters reliably almost real time, better service to households (alarm in case of leakages, more accurate billing system; preserving the environment by abstracting less fresh water

Water distribution without metering