Periodic Reporting for period 1 - AMR-G (Smart your Water Meter)
Reporting period: 2019-02-01 to 2019-05-31
Smart water meters (or AMR – automatic meter reading), using advanced communication technologies, facilitate more frequent, higher resolution and remotely accessible data generation – imperative for the level of control and planning that is demanded by today’s consumers and businesses. Smart metering enhances knowledge of the how, when and where of water consumption. However, worldwide, over 90% of meters today are analogue, and not smart. Those that are smart use integrated meters and different communication modes. As there is no existing standard, making water meters replacement and network creation a very costly task. The CAPX and OPEX of replacing all of these analogue meters is economically not possible for most municipalities and water utilities.
Our unique technology transforms any water meter into a smart meter by simply clipping on our communication unit utilizing the water meter picture, dynamic OCR method and two-way connectivity. AMR-G provides a 100% fool proof reading, along with many other unique tools for water meter management and maintenance. With the addition of the cellular modem using the narrow band IoT (NB-IoT) to our product, we have extended the solution to cover crowded urban areas as well.
During this project, our objective was to test the technological feasibility of the new communication unit as well as validate the economic feasibility of our entering the European market.
Our unique technology transforms any water meter into a smart meter by simply clipping on our communication unit utilizing the water meter picture, dynamic OCR method and two-way connectivity. AMR-G provides a 100% fool proof reading, along with many other unique tools for water meter management and maintenance. With the addition of the cellular modem using the narrow band IoT (NB-IoT) to our product, we have extended the solution to cover crowded urban areas as well.
During this project, our objective was to test the technological feasibility of the new communication unit as well as validate the economic feasibility of our entering the European market.
During this project, AMR-G modified the communication module and analysed the feasibility of the introduction of both versions of the product into the European market. We ran pilots in crowded zones and high buildings (30 stories and up) in two major cities in Israel to test the new unit’s NB-IoT communication technology, Tel Aviv and Beer Sheva. The business model’s feasibility was tested from the perspective of the selling price of our communication unit vs. the pricing of existing solutions of smart water meters in Europe.
The results of our pilot were very successful, as are detailed in the attached report. Mekorot, Israel's national water utility, has expressed interest in us further developing our product so that the meter can automatically shut off the water as well. We are beginning to plan this now.