FOCUS Sensors
Mackay begins second round of smart water meter installations Mackay Regional Council has planned its second round of smart water meters after successfully saving money and water over the past ten years. Thanks to its collaboration with Taggle Systems, Mackay has avoided building a new water treatment plant until at least 2048. DURING THE MID-2000S, the Mackay region of Queensland was experiencing a booming economy and rapid population growth. These created increasing pressure on the cost of delivering water and sewerage services. It also created a need for a new water treatment plant in the future. However, such
capital investment is significant, and it was hoped that this type of capital investment could be delayed. Enter Taggle Systems. Mackay Regional Council and Taggle Systems partnered to develop a smart water network with automatic meter reading devices to be rolled out across the area to collect data. Taggle Smart water meter integrated into a connection in Mackay. Photo by Mackay Regional Council
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INSIDE WATER September/October 2022
Andrea Thayer is the Stakeholder and Client Support Officer for Mackay Regional Council. She knows how important it is to engage with the community, look at the impact of providing data to engaged consumers, and what the next step means for Mackay. Where it started The original goal of the program was to reduce water use. Thayer pointed out that the Council wanted to reduce people’s water consumption. “Our daily water demand was getting really high. All the evidence indicated that it was mostly outdoor water use. We did a marketing campaign to educate people about better times of the day to water their lawns. That way, we could encourage people to use less water and still have green grass,” she said. The next stage of the campaign was to introduce the remote readers and then the public portal where people could access their water consumption. Council installed the MRC-1 and ADC-1 devices connected to Taggle’s Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) on every water connection in Mackay. Mackay and Tyeware worked with Taggle to develop an analytical platform called MiWater (now Aqualus Water) to understand the data, while customers could access a portal called MyH20. Another key point is that the remote readers’ data allowed Mackay to understand their trunk and reticulation network. This knowledge includes non-revenue water and losses by completing water balance calculations at a DMA (District Metered Area) level. Council found a 12 per cent reduction in per capita residential water consumption following its campaign. That may not seem like much, but about 30 litres per person