As climate change continues to wreak havoc on natural ecosystems around the globe, SA is in a precarious position. Our average annual rainfalls of 450mm are almost half that of the world average — 860mm. Over the past 18 months we’ve seen the devastating effect of prolonged droughts on our economy and our people.
While this drought may be drawing to a close, there will be more in the future. The only way for us to prosper will be for millions of South Africans to take the issue more seriously, and conserve this precious resource wherever they can.
But just how do we go about doing this?
While solving the complex issue of water shortages requires various interventions from a number of stakeholders, intelligent metering systems could play a key role in helping us better understand water usage, know where water is being wasted and start making positive changes.
For municipalities, these systems can support broader water conservation programmes while ensuring accurate billing and collections. In fact, they can start developing price incentives that help citizens lessen their usage.
For example, with smart water metering, authorities can build tools to analyse usage patterns. If excessive usage is recorded in a particular household, they could send alerts, implement restricted water flows or enforce variable tariff structures. There are various psychological levers to pull, to encourage people to become more conscious and to penalise those that use water excessively.
If usage is routinely noted between the hours of 2am to 5am, there is a good possibility that a leak somewhere in the household could be causing this unusual usage. With smart metering, alerts could be sent to the homeowner, suggesting that they investigate the possibility of a leak.
In some of our trials with the Western Cape town of George, we found that up to 6% of households are losing 1l per hour due to leaks, resulting in 1.7-million litres of wasted water in the town each year. This is a scenario that is being played out in every village, town and city, nationwide.
And it is not just in reducing leaks that these platforms can play a role. With the water metering platform integrated into the same platform as smart electricity metering, it becomes possible for households to overlay data about their electricity usage, with data relating to water usage. This gives homeowners a perspective on how much of their water is used for various appliances, such as the geyser and dishwasher, as well as the garden or the pool.
Most homeowners rely on post-paid water meters, often receiving ambiguous estimates for their water bills. Perhaps one of the biggest reasons for our general sense of apathy towards water conservation stems from this inability to actually see our usage at a very accurate, granular level.
But imagine if checking your water usage were as easy as opening up a smartphone app, and getting a near real-time sense of how much water you have used this month, during which hours of the day the most consumption occurs, how that compares with households of a similar size, and how your bill might be affected if you surpass certain usage thresholds?
With this kind of visibility over consumption, we would become far more aware of how we are using water.
Combined with sensor-based technology in the pipes, smart metering platforms also enable municipalities to check the quality of the water — swiftly picking up any issues (such as chemical imbalances or sediment deposits) and minimising their effect.
As we reflect on the effect of this most-recent drought, we must turn our attention to technology, and find ways to harness the power of intelligent metering platforms.
• Jansen van Rensburg is portfolio manager for cross-industry solutions at T-Systems SA.
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