Why water companies choose LAISON for smart prepaid water meters
Guest/partner contributor
Posted on: 11 January 2023
Some water companies in the Middle East have started to tender for the STS prepaid water meter, arousing new discussion on smart water metering, as a solution for improving billing efficiency.
Recently, some water companies in the Middle East have started to tender for the STS prepaid water meter, arousing new discussion on smart water metering, as a solution for improving billing efficiency, in African countries and beyond.
Prepaid water meters are not a new thing, even in Africa, but most projects failed before 2010. Amid the development of IoT technology and the popularity of Mobile payment in Africa, manufacturers started to promote smart STS prepaid water meters with different types of communication options, such as LoRa/LoRaWAN, NB-IoT, Bluetooth, etc. for remote data reading and online monitoring.
Cloud-based management platforms like LAPIS SaaS system, which can support 24 hours of non-interrupting service for token generation also take an important role, which significantly decreases service challenges, and the training job.
As an open protocol, STS (Standard Transfer Specification ) technology is popularly used on smart prepaid meters, typically electricity, water and gas meters. There are many different manufacturers of STS prepaid meters around the world, and a lot of them are from China, India, and European smart metering companies. Compared to smart water meters, the electricity meter usage is more mature and at least covers more than 35 African counties already.
The case for smart water meters is more complicated since most water meters are installed outdoors. On the one side, the high humidity in the rainy season, coupled with the non-protection installation environment and water quality, cause many challenges for smart water meters. On the other side, the infrastructure in Africa also causes some problems in promoting smart metering technology, like insufficient power supply, the communication network depending on 2G/3G/4G, etc. Therefore, the smart water metering solution needs to be customized for local water companies.
The first 5,000 LAISON STS prepaid water meters were installed in PWA in 2015, which confronted technical challenges like IP level failure to satisfy the local requirement, which also led to battery service issues. The good thing is LAISON continuously provides the after-sales service and upgrades the design of the meters around every three years for one generation. The latest Parise series smart STS prepaid water meter is IP68 with 10 years battery life, and the electronic module, battery, valve, and separate maintenance, the Gateway or Data Concentrator Unit also provide the Solar panel for the power supply.
Maybe these features are reasons why more and more water companies choose LAISON when they require the prepaid water meter project. Additionally, LAISON also has the following advantages:
- LAISON has the full series smart prepaid water meter, with Ultrasonic, Multi-jet, and volumetric metering technologies, optional communication includes LoRa/LoRaWAN, GPRS, NB-IoT, Bluetooth, etc. The prepaid water meter size ranges from DN15, 20, 25 to DN 32, 40.. even to DN200 for industry Prepaid water meters.
- LAISON provides 24 Hours Non-Interrupting Cloud based vending System-LAPIS SaaS which integrates with Mobile Payment Service. Until today, LAISON has integrated with more than 30 African Mobile payment platforms like Airtel, MTN, M-Pesa, Interswitch, Fawry, Togocom, EcoCash, Paystack, etc.
- LAISON has experience in more than 20 African countries with different environments, with Hand to Hand site training service and online remote support during COVID-19.
Today, most of the leading national water companies in Africa choose LAISON as the technical partner to solve the challenges of billing and NRW. LAISON has also started to extend the service from metering to information software and keeps open to the customized management platform, App for water companies. For example, some of the meter reading workers estimate the readings without visiting the site, according to this feedback, LAISON provides the Photo Shoot System for a mechanical meter reading to decrease the NRW loss at the management level. However, there are still many things needed to improve the cash flow and operation performance of water companies, such as the attempt of PPP mode for providing the water distribution service.
LAISON is ready to create more value for water companies based on continuous innovation.
Author: Mr. Raymond Zheng, MD of LAISON | email: [email protected]
Visit the Laison website: www.laisongroup.com
