SA Water’s leak detection technology, installed in 2017, has detected over half of all water main breaks and leaks in the Adelaide CBD since the start of operation.
SA Water says the network has enabled it to “identify anomalies and proactively repair faults, reduce service disruptions and improve responses to unplanned works, while enhancing available asset information.”
The smart network trial, costing $4m according to SA Water, uses more than 300 acoustic sensors in the water network. Each sensor covers an average range of 100 metres and they monitor around 50 percent of the city’s water main network, with a focus on cast iron pipes in areas where the potential customer impact of a break is greatest.
Implementation of the system followed SA Water’s discovery, in 2016, that pressure transients in its network in the CBD were larger and more frequent than previously assumed, and likely to be causing pipe fatigue.
Awarded IoT Project of the Year
The system won SA Water the 2018 IoT Project of the Year Award in the annual IoT Awards, and SA Water said at the time that the network had enabled it to “identify anomalies and proactively repair faults, reduce service disruptions and improve responses to unplanned works, while enhancing available asset information.”
Speaking ahead of the OzWater ‘19 conference in Melbourne, SA Water’s chief executive Roch Cheroux said, since its inception, 40 faults had been detected and repaired proactively, compared to 36 failures without warning.
He added: “Most reactive incidents were sudden failures that didn’t offer any detectable signs, and the reality is there will be some that behave in this way, but they still teach us about how the rest of the network responds.
“Our sensors detect around 200 environmental noises every day, and our people and systems continue to improve their understanding of acoustic patterns to help distinguish circumferential or longitudinal cracks in our pipes from other sounds picked up by the technology.”
To build the system SA Water deployed Visenti’s smart water analytics platform for data analysis and visualisation as well as alert algorithms and systems.
Visenti transient (high speed pressure) sensors and alert algorithms were also used for monitoring and analysing short term operational and long term planning responses to levels of dynamic pressure activity.
SA Water service provider Detection Services supplied and installed Von Roll acoustic loggers, for listening to the network and, in particular, to listen for noises from cracked pipes.
Sydney-based Taggle provided the data communication devices, the wireless radio network, cloud based data collection platform and customer portal and analytics.
Following the trial’s success in the Adelaide CBD, SA Water says it has expanded its smart network to six further locations across South Australia, and expanded it to include sewer and odour monitoring.
Cheroux said SA Water was the first water utility in the world to implement a range of IoT-enabled sensors at scale in a defined geographical area.
He talked about the system in a presentation Performance of the permanent acoustic monitoring system for the Adelaide CBD water networkat OzWater’19 – Australia’s international water conference and exhibition held 7-9 May.
