Water meters and high-tech solutions for curbing consumption costs
5/4/2018
New technologies for real time monitoring of indoor and outdoor water consumption, softwares for user/manager communication of consumption, rain and grey water recovery and reuse and the assessment of the economic and environmental sustainability. These are some of the results of the project “Green Smart Technology for Water” conducted by ENEA and the Universities of Ferrara and Bologna for a sustainable use of water in buildings, presented during the World Water Day.
Funded by the POR FESR 2014-2020 of the Emilia-Romagna region, the project developed innovative sustainability-oriented solutions with the purpose of increasing water awareness in citizens also through the introduction of new ICT technologies.
Under the project, technologies allowing real-time monitoring of consumptions were developed and sustainable solutions for water saving were proposed, as well as a tanks sizing software for water recycling and green roofs. The environmental performances associated with innovative solutions were measured both on a building scale and a district scale with techniques based on both the evaluation of the life cycle (LCA) and the “urban metabolism,” that is to say the exchange of matter, energy and information established between the urban settlement and its natural environment or geographical context.
The monitoring activities regarded the total consumptions of approximately 300 houses in Gorino, a little village in the Ferrara area, and a pool in Ozzano (Emilia), the ENEA Brasimone Center and 5 households in the Bologna area, in which consumptions of single appliances were measured (washing machine, dishwasher, shower etc.).
An interface allowing every user to monitor from the computer, tablet or smartphone his own total water consumption and in the last 24 hours and detect possible water leaks through a simple icon. This system removes the need for an operator coming to the house for measuring consumptions. It will also be possible to messure one’s water consumption according to economic and environmental performances indexes.
“ At present there’s much talk about smart metering applied to the water utility. But the specificity of this monitoring kit is to collect real-time data without the help of local personnel, cheaply and gradually, and to implement additional services, including information processing. In this way the information are available not only to the multiutility but also to the families, made more aware and responsible of how and how much water they consume every day”, Marco Franchini, Professor at the University of Ferrara and scientific coordinator of the project, said. The project also envisaged the development of a software tool for the accumulation storage tanks for the recovery and reuse of rain and grey water: The software takes into account rainfall levels of the main cities in Emilia-Romagna, the different collecting surfaces (waterproof coverings) estimating water consumption of not drinking water and the supply of grey waters.
And that’s not all. Thanks to the project, a monitoring system of an experimental green roof at the Bologna University was developed, which allowed to analyze its hydrological behaviour and replicate it through a numerical model. The model was used within the tanks sizing software to take acccount of the different nature of the collection surfaces.
The project GST4Water involved over 20 among professors and researchers in the civil and hydraulic engineer sectors and the ICT of the Universities of Bologna and Ferrara (CIRI-EA and CIRI-EC) and ENEA (Bologna Energy and Environment Laboratory).
For more information:
Marco Ferraris, ENEA – Laboratory of Technologies for Management of Integrated Waste, Wastewater and Secondary Raw Materials marco.ferraris@enea.it
Link to the playlist free for reproduction “Giornata mondiale dell’acqua – GST4Water”