Photo Andreas Nagel. Used under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported licence.
Taggle Systems – which has developed a low powered wide area network for IoT — has stuck a deal with the Mackay Regional Council in Queensland to commercialise the council’s MiWater application that uses smart water meters and other sensor to detect leaks.
Taggle Systems will acquire intellectual property rights to the MiWater software and the existing customer contracts under a what it says is a multimillion dollar deal.
It will support existing customer and plans to further develop the software and expand its commercial use around Australia and the world.
The MiWater software was developed for the council by local IT company Tyeware starting in 2014. According to Taggle it is now used by 20 water utilities and more than 110,000 homes and businesses in Australia.
Taggle says it will work with Tyeware on the future development of the software and plans to demonstrate an internationalised version at the American Water Works Association conference in Denver Colorado, in June.
Taggle Systems managing director John Quinn said Taggle would expand the capability of the MiWater software to collect and analyse more types of data, help utilities plan and monitor their assets, improve their operations and engage with households and businesses about their water consumption.
The MiWater suite includes the myH2o website, used by more than 14,000 Mackay residents to keep track of their daily water consumption. Taggle said it had been instrumental in helping the region conserve precious water resources.
“In Mackay last year alone, the MiWater software helped identify and notify consumers of 35,000 water leaks, and Australia-wide has helped identify leaks totalling 6 billion litres of water.
“This reduction in water demand has had a meaningful effect on the costs of water in Mackay, allowing council to defer the costs of a new water treatment plant for at least 10 years, with the savings passed onto residents.”
The software was also instrumental in Mackay winning the International Water Association’s Project Innovation Award in 2016, and the Queensland Water Award for Innovation in 2018 for waste-water monitoring.
