Water metering and smart grid specialist Sensus has won a contract to supply one of the largest smart-metering grid campaigns with core technology to support the roll-out of smart metering to ten-million homes and small business in the northern region of England.

The campaign, initiated by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) in the UK, forms part of the Climate and Energy package, a set of binding legislation that ensures that the European Union meets the targets of a 20% reduction in greenhouse gases, a 20% improvement in energy efficiency and a 20% increase in the use of renewable resources for energy generation by 2020.

The DECC established that the reduction of greenhouse gases and the improvement in energy efficiency were unachievable without improved knowledge and management of resources such as electricity, gas and water. As a result, a national smart grid was identified as the most effective way of providing the information to holistically manage these resources.

As part of a four-company consortium, Sensus will supply its Flexnet Long Range Radio (LRR) smart grid technology to the campaign. Apart from monitoring electricity and gas meters, the iPerl electronic smart water meters will be deployed.

They offer low-flow accu-racy and long-term durability with a guaranteed accurate service life of 18 years.

Sensus’ technology connects all end points, without the need for wiring, multiple repeaters and gateways, through a central beacon to the management centre.

“This is a global coup for Sensus. “It is one of the largest con-tracts of its kind awarded worldwide and is indicative of how the future smart grid systems for electricity, water and gas will be implemented,” Sensus South Africa MD Basil Bold says, while arguing that the technology could also have local application.

He adds that the system deployment expendi- ture for the campaign is about £12-billion.

Sensus’ FlexNet technology offers cus-tomer servicing with a proven 99% first-time installation success and faultless data integrity, he says.

Coupled with iPerl smart water meters, the added advantages are pinpoint measuring accuracy, near-real-time data accessibility and a much longer accurate life span than conventional water meters.

Bold believes that if South African local authorities and property developers embrace smart technology, as is the trend in the rest of the world, there will be more revenue generated through more accurate billing and a reduction in nonrevenue water, owing to timeous consumer and municipal alerts offered by this technology.

“Owing to the reach of LRR, it is ideally suited to South African conditions, where cities sprawl over widespread areas. “ For maximum effectiveness, but not necessarily a prerequisite, it is self-evident that the primary utility should be State-owned power utility Eskom, with munici-palities operating off the system,” he says.

Sensus conducted research into the effec-tiveness of smart water technology in over 15 countries in 2012. The research indicated that smart water networks alone can offer savings of up $12.5-billion a year worldwide, and that water leaks cost utilities about $9.6-billion a year.

The savings that result from the use of smart water technology can enable utilities to reinvest about 5% in their budgets to improve water networks and help address the global water scarcity crisis.