Non-Revenue Water Savings, Achieved Through Vibration Sensor Integrated Digital Meters

D. Lo Jacono (Jacobs), C. Hill (Jacobs), E. Milburn (iota), D. Mason (iota)

Water utilities globally are focused on reducing non-revenue water. Water loss leaks and supply interruptions increase operation and capital costs, reduced service performance, and customer dissatisfaction.

Most water utilities in Australia and New Zealand are trialling or considering the business case for Digital Metering (DM). DM provides significant efficiency gains, including automated billing and improved customer engagement to reduce demand and detect customer-side leaks. The deployment of DM for any water utility is considerable and does not assist in identifying physical losses in the network. One approach to locating physical leaks in the network is to include vibration sensors as part of the DM deployment. 

South East Water (SEW), a large water corporation in Melbourne, Australia, developed the Sotto® network leak detection sensor (Sotto), an innovative technology designed to be integrated into static Digital Meters. Sotto can be included in the DM deployment at marginal cost, providing early detection of leaks and reduced water loss.

A Sotto-based approach provides permanent surveillance of a water network to identify and locate leaks. Water utilities have insights that enable better planning of their maintenance and renewals, ultimately reducing non-revenue water. SEW tested Sotto in a trial deployment of 5,000 Sotto-enabled digital meters in concentrated in 5 suburbs (including suburbs in and surrounding Frankston and Port Melbourne). SEW found that the trial successfully showed early detection and reduced water loss.

Jacobs was engaged in 2022 to review SEW’s findings and extrapolate the results across the wider SEW customer footprint in advance of a submission tothe regulator for their next regulatory period. SEW’s business case assumes at least a 1% reduction in water purchased from Melbourne Water is achievable with Sotto-enabled meters. Jacobs’ analysis determined that installing Sotto sensors will improve the early detection of leaks and meet this target in either a density of one Sotto per property or one every two properties, with the former providing a better return on SEW’s investment.

This paper details how Sotto can be useful in network leak identification and location, potential operational changes and the benefit analysis undertaken by Jacobs presented as a case study. The case study results do not infer or imply that equivalent results may or could be experienced by any other water utility.