Intelligent water meters of the future

Intelligent recording and handling of consumption data also known as smart metering is more than ever present not only since the European Union’s resolution on end-use efficiency and energy services. Driven by increasing intelligence the consumption data meters turn out to be a massive support for both consumption control systems as well as reporting the actual usage time for the provider and consumer.
As wireless transmission of the quantity of heat produced via remote readout systems has been state-of-the-art for many years, intelligent energy autonomous and additionally remote readout systems are still a future vision.

HSG-IMIT devotes to this topic as a significant partner of the European joint research project and consortium WiMBex. The developed energy harvester installed into the water conduit to replace conventional water meters allows energy autonomous, thus battery-free as well as wireless water metering. By transforming kinetic into electric energy by using micro turbines they are self-sufficient and maintenance-free avoiding personnel intensive battery changes. Furthermore, the cost-intensive annual readout of the consumption data will be omitted as the data are remotely read out by radio communication by means of integrated radio sensors being cross-linked by wireless MBus standards.

This is clearly a win-win situation as providers benefit from the development being able to regulate and monitor the electric grid efficiently because of the at all times available consumption data thus offering economic rates at off-peak periods, whereas consumers financially profit by a monthly charging and reduced rates.

Contact: Moritz Faller, HSG-IMIT - Institut für Mikro- und Informationstechnik der Hahn-Schickard-Gesellschaft e.V.
moritz.faller@hsg-imit.de