Smart Leak Detection Water Meter

This will ensure that the smart meter will conform to necessary standards, many of which would be expensive to obtain independently. The existing unit also incorporates an in-built valve allowing the water flow to be turned on and off from the meter.

The smart water meter has been modified to make it ‘intelligent’ in several ways including:

• Send the meter readings to a central server wirelessly
• Operation of the valve remotely so that the water flow can be turned off automatically if required (e.g., if there is a flood occurring).
• Adding a thermoelectric or turbine power unit

Communication System The first-generation product uses the GSM/GPRS network for data communication. This is a relatively high-power solution but is a network with wide coverage and with data SIM cards it can be relatively cheap to send the data. Furthermore, in areas where the data signal is poor it would be possible, using this solution, to revert and send the data back to the base-station as a text (SMS) message. Text messaging is a more expensive and less flexible solution, but it does provide a fallback and will allow two-way communication from some areas where data reception is poor.

Status – Currently a simple GSM demonstrator has been created of the water meter and Thermoelectric generator. Basic testing has been carried out to prove the power consumption with an off the shelf water turbine.