Carlota Rodriguez | Henk Buchner Greater Western Water | Verge Solutions

1. Remote Network
Conductivity Monitoring
in Dual Supply Areas
Carlota Rodriguez
Senior Water Quality & Process Engineer, Greater Western Water
Henk Büchner
Director, Verge Solutions

2. About Greater Western Water

3. Our Service Region

4. About Verge Solutions
• Started working for an Instrumentation solutions business
• Realised that the water industry is spread out over a wider
area but without power and communications
• Which was the basis for creating what is now known as the
Kallipr Captis logger
• Verge Solutions’ speciality is sensor engineering and
integration, particularly for IoT and for the Kallipr loggers.

5. The Key
• Trial innovative solutions that maximise investment putting customers first
• Share the learnings
• Inspire the industry to cater for our needs

6. Our Need
• Detect cross-connections
• Inexpensive and reliable conductivity sensors in potable
network where we have recycled water network
• Sensors that could be installed and maintained with minimal
disruption to customers at a reasonable price

7. What We Knew
• Available wet tapping systems:
• Costly
• No need to isolate for installation – no impact customer
• Impact to other services - DBYD prior to installation
• Work that Yarra Valley Water had done in developing the Hydrant
Insertion Device (HID):
• Less costly than wet tapping
• Time required for installation reduced – impact to customers
reduced
• No impact to other services
• Isolation required for maintenance - impact customer
• Verge have an ability to innovate

8. Trial Options

9. Trial Purpose
To verify that the Cirq System:
1. Is easy to install
2. Requires minimal disruption to customers
3. Is reliable:
• Measurements of conductivity of the circulation system are
comparable to HID
• The circulation system doesn’t block up and not perform
4. Has good battery life
5. Requires low maintenance
6. Is easy to service – no impact on customers
7. The set up doesn’t instigate vandalism

10. Trial Location

11. Trial Installation

12. Details of the Trial
1. It was originally set up for three months to verify one-year reliability of the battery,
sensor and pump
2. Driving everything eight times faster would simulate two years’ use in three months
3. Logging every three minutes and sending data every three hours, for three months
4. Maintenance of equipment (no more than once a year)
5. Installation near school on nature strip to monitor vandalism
6. Testing that alarms worked

13. Trial Results
HID
Conductivity
13 Apr – 13 May 2020
vs
Circulation
System
Conductivity
13 Apr – 13 May 2020

14. Trial Results
HID Temperature
13 Apr – 13 May 2020
vs
Circulation System Temperature
13 Apr – 13 May 2020
vs
Ambient Temperature
13 Apr – 13 May 2020

15. Trial Results
Wet Tap HID CirQ
Ease of Installation No Yes Yes
Maintenance Expenses Significant Significant Minimal
Minimal Impact to customer Yes No Once
Impact on other services Yes No No
Hardware Cost High Medium Medium
Install Cost $8K (est) $3K (est) $3K (est)

16. Trial Results
• Alarm
• Switch activated when Pillar box was opened

17. Trial Results

18. Trial Learnings
• Pump had to change from plastic to stainless steel as plastic
wasn’t suitable for installation (16th January 2020)
• Initially the pump was running permanently because Captis
runs the pump continuously instead of being on for
20minutes/day
• Developers changed the firmware to bring the battery to
power the pumps on and off
• Batteries were replaced (11th May 2020)

19. Trial Results

20. Trial Limitations
• Limits of data visualisation and alarming in Cumulosity
(device management)
• Encourage to use other platforms for data visualisation
• Limits of historical data storage (two-six months limit versus
13 months in SCADA)
• SCADA integration

21. Trial Benefits
• Installation
• Installation –no digging
• No impact on other services – No Dial Before You Dig
• Minimal disruption to customers
• Maintenance
• Minimal maintenance
• No disruption to customers
• Reliability

22. Trial Benefits
• Cost
• The water utility owns the data and access – no
subscription to a supplier required to access the data
• No service contract required
• Data transfer
• Captis uses NB-IoT which supports both 4G and 5G so it
won’t be impacted for 15 years when going to 5G
• No waste to environment
• 100% Australian: Captis / network / data platform

23. Opportunities Opened – Future Trial Consideration
Use of the Micro Bleed System to measure Conductivity
• Further miniturisation – utilising microfluids
• Further power reduction
• Reduction of total cost
Pinch Valve
Pressure
Regulator
Chlorine
Analyser

24. The Key
Trial Innovative
Solutions
Share the
Learnings
Own the
Solution

25. Thank you!
gww.com.au