Project description
Making lawn irrigation sustainable
Lawn irrigation is a watering practice with such high water consumption that it is becoming a constantly growing problem from an economic and environmental aspect. Oriented towards a comprehensive solution to this issue, the EU-funded RAINOLVE project is introducing a smart technology: an accurate irrigation controller comprising a multi-sensor coupled with an intelligent cloud-based platform with a vast botanical and agronomical database to calculate and check the exact water, fertiliser and light needs for each site. This innovation resulted from the collaboration between an Italian engineering and manufacture leader in irrigation products and a Spanish SME specialised in software. The project will work towards optimising, testing and validating the product, preparing it for the market.
Objective
Irrigation of private lawns is becoming more and more an economic burden for owners and a source of environmental concern for the society due to the high-water consumption it entails. In Europe we are using almost 380 m3 of water spending an average of 728 € per year for a garden of 500 m2 (a small garden of just 10x50 m) whose real needs would be 210 m3 for 405 €. If we consider the number of households with a garden requiring irrigation (we estimated more than 1,5 M in our target market), the water need is hugely impacting from both economic and environmental point of views. Under this context, Precision Irrigation such our irrigation controller is the only option. This growing technology which optimizes the usage of water is expected to expand its market share by 13% from 2016 to 2023. RAINOLVE is the fruit of a collaboration between RAIN, an Italian engineering and manufacture leader in irrigation products; and INOLVE, a Spanish SME specialized in software, for the development of an accurate irrigation controller. RAINOLVE is a multi-sensor coupled with intelligent cloud-based platform with vast botanical and agronomical database to calculate and check the exact plant water, fertilizer and light needs in function of each site conditions. RAINOLVE will provide a highly accurate irrigation technology with low return over investment (less than 1 year) allowing savings up to 19,000€/ha/year: water (up to 80%), fertilizer (up to 40%). RAINOLVE technology stands in a TRL7, with a real scale prototype tested in different field sites. RAINOLVE project main objective is to optimize, test and validate the technology to take it to industrial production and successful commercialization. We estimate that RAINOLVE will be able to generate an annual revenue of 9 M EUR and 36 new job positions among RAIN and INOLVE, in addition to save 340 M m3 of water in Europe, accounting for almost 400 M EUR.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
20122 MILANO MI
Italy
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.