271,000 users to get smart water meters

As many as 271,000 consumers in Muscat will be provided with Smart wtaer meters, according to the Public Authority of Electricity and Water (DIAM).

This ‘Build and Operate’ move, a first-of-its-kind in the country, follows the earlier experience of installing nearly 10,000 such meters in Musandam.

Speaking to the Observer, Hilal al Abri, Project Manager for the smart water meter project, said that complaints of bills for unused water will cease to exist after the installation of the new meters which will be done in phases.

“A total of 271,000 users in Muscat will be provided with smart meters or automated meters which will give them hourly update of their water consumption and give them better control over the water use,” said Al Abri.

According to him, this smart initiative will also help them identify any errors in billing so that it can be brought to the attention of the DIAM officials.

“There were human errors in billing and often the air transmission too was billed resulting in confusion with their usage and all these will be totally eliminated in the coming days,” he said.

In the initial phase in Musandam, 9,995 consumers were connected with smart meters. “The results were really inspiring,” he said.

Smart meters will be installed replacing the old ones in the initial phase, followed by changing the relatively newer ones which will at present be equipped with a retrofit device to serve the consumers on par with smart meters.

The system, rolled out in collaboration with the National Electricity and Energy Centre at a cost of RO 25 million, is based on Internet of Things technology (IoT), which will read the consumption and update the user every hour on 24x7 basis.

“This new smart solution to water meter reading will eliminate the challenges faced by the utility providers when collecting meter readings, especially in isolated residential locations,” Al Abri said.

The smart water meter automatically collects consumption data and transfers it to a central database for billing, troubleshooting and evaluation and will be shown on a portal on the consumers’ smart phones and on a dedicated application.

“This new system will also help DIAM to collect accurate meter readings from customers who will receive bills based on their actual consumption, rather than on estimates or past use, automatically and will also be able to save water by spotting leaks”, Al Abri said.