By Kathryn Kretschmer-Weyland
November 9, 2009

The same strategies and technologies that make the Smart Grid smart can also make municipal water systems more intelligent. Yet with all the focus on developing a Smart Grid for delivery of electricity, it is easy to forget that municipal water companies may reap just as many benefits from smart technologies. These technologies can help achieve the goals of the U.S. Conference of Mayors Water Council to conserve water, secure water distribution networks, and improve cost efficiencies.

The key to understanding activity in water systems is data. This data is collected from numerous sensors that monitor activity at critical points in the distribution system – from meters inside the home to water treatment plants. It is impossible to know how the delivery system is performing without this information.

Data collected from meters, for example, can help pinpoint problems such as leaks. It also allows municipal water companies to know who is using water, and when. Using the data collected from meters, rate structures can be set up to charge people and businesses that use large amounts of water over short periods of time higher rates, allowing municipalities to more fairly allocate the costs of maintaining the infrastructure for peak usage.

Moreover, water utilities also depend on the SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) devices that keep tabs on critical infrastructure and processes at water treatment and wastewater collection and treatment facilities. SCADA data can forewarn utility managers of situations that could affect water quality and safety.

Today, utility sensor networks transmit back to the utility using different backhaul technologies. Meters might send data via a public cellular telephone network, while SCADA devices might directly connect to the utility over a private local-area network. The problem with these systems is that they are costly, slow, and often insecure.

What’s needed is a seamless way to link the standards-based utility LAN to the smart applications, devices, and subsystems that comprise the utility infrastructure. One way to build such an Intelligent Infrastructure™ for utilities is by eliminating the clutter of communications strategies now being employed and replacing it with a single, multipurpose, wide-area network (WAN) that seamlessly links with the utility LAN via standard, IP-based communications protocols.

This type of ubiquitous utility network was recently introduced by Aclara RF Systems Inc., a platinum partner with The U.S. Conference of Mayors, to improve utility infrastructure planning, implementation, support, and maintenance. The Aclara™ Smart Communications Network is a Wi-Fi solution that allows water utilities to use a single, standards-based network for transmitting data from the utility infrastructure, providing the open architecture necessary to guarantee maximum interoperability and flexibility. For utilities, it becomes the backbone of an Intelligent Infrastructure that connects together existing utility assets and utility applications.