Page 65 - Connecting cities and communities with the Sustainable Development Goals

United for Smart Sustainable Cities
Connecting cities and communities with the Sustainable Development Goals

Figure 6-1 The flow of information of the SmartH2O platform (from Smart Metering, Water Pricing and
Social Media to Stimulate Residential Water Efficiency: Opportunities for the SmartH2O Project)

2.2 Implementation

The SmartH2O platform will be deployed as three case studies, by the three water utilities, Thames Water
(UK), Società Elettrica Sopracenerina (CH) and EMIVASA (ES), which are partners of the project.

Thames Water, the largest UK water utility company, has installed Advanced Meter Infrastructure (AMI)
equipment to collect frequent meter readings (15 min intervals) from all connections within the District
Metered Area (DMA), with the aim of obtaining an accurate water balance, as well as confirming the business
case benefits of a large scale rollout. This experiment covers five DMAs: two in London, two in Reading and
one in Swindon with a total of 5000 properties and 2500 meters installed. Two different fixed network
technologies have been used: an advanced fixed network supplied by Arqiva/Sensus and a conventional fixed
network supplied by Vennsys/HomeRider.
Società Elettrica Sopracenerina (SES) is a power utility based in Locarno, which has installed 400 smart meters
in selected locations in the Locarno region.
EMIVASA is leading the implementation of smart metering in Valencia. In fact, Valencia will be, by the end of
2015, the first large city in Europe fully equipped with a smart metering system, with more than 430 000
smart meters from six different manufacturers connected to a fixed network and providing near real-time
data to data centres. Moreover, EMIVASA is already capable of integrating data from smart metering into
the water distribution network management systems and already provides real-time information to its
customers.
With the purpose of achieving the economic objectives of the project, i.e. to save water by dynamic water
pricing and to increase efficiency of business operations of water companies, the SmartH2O project
measured a set of key performance indicators (KPIs). Concerning the first objective, the measured KPIs were
“the amount of water saved per capita per period” and “the combined effect of dynamic water pricing and
user awareness”.
With regard to the second objective, the KPIs were: a) peak-period reduction of water consumption:
measured by comparing the historical data of peak water consumption in the two case studies with the data
monitored after the introduction of SmartH2O; b) energy required for pumping water: another indicator that
can indicate considerable savings in costs for the water utility; c) reduction in CO2 emissions: an indicator
strictly connected to energy savings, and finally d) investments avoided: it is the total amount of money that
has not been spent over a given period thanks to a reduction in water consumption.

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