Customer:

The water and sewerage unit in Ystad municipality is responsible for the operation of waterworks, treatment plants and pipe networks. The unit has just over 35 employees who are committed to creating sustainable water and wastewater solutions. Over a number of years, major investments have been made to modernise and develop the municipality's water services. These investments mean that the municipality is at the forefront of the water and sewerage sector, and ahead of other municipalities that have not yet carried out similar developments. A large part of the water meter reading in Ystad municipality is currently done automatically through remote reading. PiiGAB has delivered wM-Bus repeaters that contribute to the high level of automation.

Background:

In 2011, the municipality of Ystad took the first steps to start replacing mechanical water meters that customers read themselves with digital water meters and remote reading. This was done on a trial basis for a few years. Starting in 2015, a wider roll-out of smart water meters to a couple of hundred larger consumers began.

There are many advantages to remote reading that the water and sewerage department wanted to utilise. Some examples are reduced administration, a more reliable basis for billing and the possibility of detecting leaks and deviations at an early stage. The remotely read water meters chosen by the municipality of Ystad are equipped with integrated communication, which enables easy remote reading via both drive-by and network using various communication methods such as wireless M-Bus.

In 2015, remote reading was mainly done by drive-by. Four years later, the municipality took a decision to switch to remotely read meters for virtually all water customers.

The Challenge:

Moving from manual meter reading to automatic remote reading can present various challenges. This was also the case for the water and sewerage department in Ystad. One of these was to maximise the use of the municipality's existing infrastructure, including sewage pumping stations, booster stations and water towers, when expanding the water meter reading network. Many of these locations have fibre and electricity installed and the water and sewerage department was therefore able to easily install solutions to connect a large number of meters to the collection unit via repeaters and M-Bus communication.

"We had some places where there were communication problems in getting signals and data to the collection unit. We were able to solve this by amplifying the signal using antenna-equipped repeaters. Since we own the devices in our infrastructure, we could do the installations without any authorisation requirements"

says Tony Gunnemar, development engineer at the Water and Wastewater Unit.

The Solution:

When the municipality decided in 2019 to replace virtually all mechanical water meters, it also presented a strategic and technical challenge. Remote reading would also take place in places where there was no access to electricity and fibre, and where it would be too expensive to install electricity and fibre.

"- We then started looking at solutions with battery-powered repeaters. At the same time, we saw it as a challenge to utilise the technology in the right places to really get the most out of the repeaters. In 2022, the collaboration with PiiGAB began, and since then they have supplied repeaters with mounting brackets and external antennas, which have been installed in lampposts and at pumping stations, among other places.

The repeaters are of high technical quality and today there are about a hundred water meters where the repeaters amplify the signal from the water meters and provide stable communication" 

Tony explains.

At PiiGAB, we are pleased with the collaboration with Ystad Municipality's water and wastewater unit. It's great to be part of such an aggressive and well-thought-out initiative to replace manual meter reading with remote reading. Not all municipalities have made the transition without disruption.

We are convinced that with repeaters we can often help to ensure secure and interference-free communication between water meters and collection units!