Thermoelectric water meter energy harvesting

Domestic electronic water meters are installed by water meter utility companies to accurately measure household water usage for billing purposes, progressing from simple electromechanical systems to state-of-the art volumetric electronic smart meters with RF radio transmission, remote reading, and automatic billing capability. The motivation for this work is to replace, or increase the lifetime of, the on-board lithium-ion battery installed in electronic water meters with a thermoelectric energy harvesting solution to create a business advantage. Practical field experiments at several different water meter installations in the UK, USA, and Australia have demonstrated a temperature difference can exist between the top-side and bottom-side of a water meter, and between several different areas of the meter and the surrounding air. This temperature difference can be harnessed to generate electrical power using thermoelectricity. A prototype thermoelectric water meter energy harvesting system has been designed, and experiments demonstrate the system will operate when a temperature difference is present across the thermoelectric module, giving an output voltage of 3.7V to power the water meter electronics directly or to provide a charge current for the existing lithium-ion battery to increase its lifetime. The work concludes it is feasible, although still challenging, to develop a solution for a novel thermoelectric powered water meter. Further work is required to address the commercial challenges that exist, develop and optimise the prototype solution into a production ready prototype, and conduct further tests using a standard UK domestic water profile at a UK water meter test site

Thermoelectric water meter energy harvesting

Domestic electronic water meters are installed by water meter utility companies to accurately measure household water usage for billing purposes, progressing from simple electromechanical systems to state-of-the art volumetric electronic smart meters with RF radio transmission, remote reading, and automatic billing capability. The motivation for this work is to replace, or increase the lifetime of, the on-board lithium-ion battery installed in electronic water meters with a thermoelectric energy harvesting solution to create a business advantage. Practical field experiments at several different water meter installations in the UK, USA, and Australia have demonstrated a temperature difference can exist between the top-side and bottom-side of a water meter, and between several different areas of the meter and the surrounding air. This temperature difference can be harnessed to generate electrical power using thermoelectricity. A prototype thermoelectric water meter energy harvesting system has been designed, and experiments demonstrate the system will operate when a temperature difference is present across the thermoelectric module, giving an output voltage of 3.7V to power the water meter electronics directly or to provide a charge current for the existing lithium-ion battery to increase its lifetime. The work concludes it is feasible, although still challenging, to develop a solution for a novel thermoelectric powered water meter. Further work is required to address the commercial challenges that exist, develop and optimise the prototype solution into a production ready prototype, and conduct further tests using a standard UK domestic water profile at a UK water meter test site

A Self-Powered Wireless Water Quality Sensing Network Enabling Smart Monitoring of Biological and Chemical Stability in Supply Systems

A smart, safe, and efficient management of water is fundamental for both developed and developing countries. Several wireless sensor networks have been proposed for real-time monitoring of drinking water quantity and quality, both in the environment and in pipelines. However, surface fouling significantly affects the long-term reliability of pipes and sensors installed in-line. To address this relevant issue, we presented a multi-parameter sensing node embedding a miniaturized slime monitor able to estimate the micrometric thickness and type of slime. The measurement of thin deposits in pipes is descriptive of water biological and chemical stability and enables early warning functions, predictive maintenance, and more efficient management processes. After the description of the sensing node, the related electronics, and the data processing strategies, we presented the results of a two-month validation in the field of a three-node pilot network. Furthermore, self-powering by means of direct energy harvesting from the water flowing through the sensing node was also demonstrated. The robustness and low cost of this solution enable its upscaling to larger monitoring networks, paving the way to water monitoring with unprecedented spatio-temporal resolution. Document type: Articl

Design of a digitalized water meter system-hardware, embedded system & meter management software

Capstone Project submitted to the Department of Engineering, Ashesi University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Engineering, May 2022Ghana's current water meter systems are not integrated to an intelligent system. To determine the quantity of water consumed, a person from the Ghana Water Company must go to the location of the water meter system to read the meter. The proposed solution is to provide a retrofitting device that converts the digitalizes the present water meter system. The retrofitting unit should reduce the causes of NRW by properly monitoring water use and providing and communicating the amount of water used to customers and the Ghana Water Company. An embedded system, and a meter management system software are the two key components of this project. The embedded system is an IoT-based system that uses the atmega328p and a hall effect sensor to calculate water usage and transmit water consumption data via the Lora Reyax module. The data is subsequently processed by the meter management software, which includes the admin portal and the user-facing mobile app.Ashesi Universit

Propuesta de mejora para incrementar la productividad en el proceso de facturación del servicio de agua potable y alcantarillado en la Entidad Prestadora de Saneamiento de Lambayeque, Zaña

La presente investigación tuvo como objetivo diseñar una propuesta de mejora para incrementar la productividad del proceso de facturación de agua potable y alcantarillado en la Entidad Prestadora de Saneamiento de Lambayeque (EPSEL) en la localidad de Zaña. La metodología de investigación estuvo dada por un enfoque cuantitativo, del tipo aplicada, nivel explicativo, método deductivo y diseño no experimental. Los resultados obtenidos fueron que las causas que influyen en la baja productividad de la empresa son toma de lectura errónea, falta de procedimiento de trabajo, falta de supervisión en la toma de lectura, personal no capacitado e impedimentos en la toma de lectura, siendo la eficiencia actual de 79.19%, la eficacia de 93.67% y la productividad de 74.18%; asimismo, con la propuesta de mejora mediante las herramientas de estudio de tiempos y estandarización bajo el enfoque del ciclo de Deming se reduce el tiempo ciclo del proceso en un 11.65% e incrementando el nivel de cumplimiento del ciclo de Deming en un 89%, siendo viable económicamente con una inversión de S/12,041.20, un beneficio mensual de S/6,914.77, un VAN de S/19,960.01, un TIR de 28.24%, un costo beneficio de 2.07, lo que quiere decir que por cada sol invertido se ganará S/1.07 con un periodo de recuperación de 3 meses y 11 días. Se concluye que con la mejora del proceso de facturación de agua potable y alcantarillado se estima un incremento de la productividad del 20.58%.Campus Chiclay

Advancing Data Collection, Management, and Analysis for Quantifying Residential Water Use via Low Cost, Open Source, Smart Metering Infrastructure

Urbanization, climate change, aging infrastructure, and the cost of delivering water to residential customers make it vital that we achieve a higher efficiency in the management of urban water resources. Understanding how water is used at the household level is vital for this objective.Water meters measure water use for billing purposes, commonly at a monthly, or coarser temporal resolutions. This is insufficient to understand where water is used (i.e., the distribution of water use across different fixtures like toilets, showers, outdoor irrigation), when water is used (i.e., identifying peaks of consumption, instantaneous or at hourly, daily, weekly intervals), the efficiency of water using fixtures, or water use behaviors across different households. Most smart meters available today are not capable of collecting data at the temporal resolutions needed to fully characterize residential water use, and managing this data represents a challenge given the rapidly increasing volume of data generated. The research in this dissertation presents low cost, open source cyberinfrastructure (datalogging and data management systems) to collect and manage high temporal resolution, residential water use data. Performance testing of the cyberinfrastructure demonstrated the scalability of the system to multiple hundreds of simultaneous data collection devices. Using this cyberinfrastructure, we conducted a case study application in the cities of Logan and Providence, Utah where we found significant variability in the temporal distribution, timing, and volumes of indoor water use. This variability can impact the design of water conservation programs, estimations and forecast of water demand, and sizing of future water infrastructure. Outdoor water use was the largest component of residential water use, yet homeowners were not significantly overwatering their landscapes. Opportunities to improve the efficiency of water using fixtures and to conserve water by promoting behavior changes exist among participants

Design and Implementation of a Self-powered Smart Water Meter

Smart cities require interactive management of water supply networks and water meters play an important role in such a task. As compared to fully mechanical water meters, electromechanical water meters or fully electronic water meters can collect real-time information through automatic meter reading (AMR), which makes them more suitable for smart cities applications. In this paper, we first study the design principles of existing water meters, and then present our design and implementation of a self-powered smart water meter. The proposed water meter is based on a water turbine generator, which serves for two purposes: (i) to sense the water flow through adaptive signal processing performed on the generated voltage; and (ii) to produce electricity to charge batteries for the smart meter to function properly. In particular, we present the design considerations and implementation details. The wireless transceiver is integrated in the proposed water meter so that it can provide real-time water flow information. In addition, a mobile phone application is designed to provide a user with a convenient tool for water usage monitoring

Design and Implementation of a Self-Powered Smart Water Meter

Smart cities require interactive management of water supply networks and water meters play an important role in such a task. As compared to fully mechanical water meters, electromechanical water meters or fully electronic water meters can collect real-time information through automatic meter reading (AMR), which makes them more suitable for smart cities applications. In this paper, we first study the design principles of existing water meters, and then present our design and implementation of a self-powered smart water meter. The proposed water meter is based on a water turbine generator, which serves for two purposes: (i) to sense the water flow through adaptive signal processing performed on the generated voltage; and (ii) to produce electricity to charge batteries for the smart meter to function properly. In particular, we present the design considerations and implementation details. The wireless transceiver is integrated in the proposed water meter so that it can provide real-time water flow information. In addition, a mobile phone application is designed to provide a user with a convenient tool for water usage monitoring