Ningbo Water Meter Technical Director Discusses the Role of Intelligent Water Meters in New Water Supply Businesses

[China Instrument Network Instrument Industry] "Now we are all talking about smart water, what is smart water? How to achieve smart water supply?" Ningbo Water Meter Co., Ltd. Technical Director, Zhejiang Water Meter Research Institute Dean Yao Ling on June 21 The 2017 (second) Water Supply Summit held on the forum shared the exploration and application of Ningbo water meters in smart water supply and smart water meters. He talked about the method and route of implementing smart water supply from the concept of smart water service, demonstrated the new role of smart water meter in new water supply business, and analyzed several key technologies of smart water meter and business application system.

Ningbo Water Meter Co., Ltd. Technical Director, Zhejiang Water Meter Research Institute Dean Yao Ling

Yao Ling introduced Ningbo Water Meter Co., Ltd. After 60 years of development, the current product line has covered all water meters, including mechanical water meters and first- and second-generation smart water meters and business application systems. Ningbo water meter is also a professional manufacturer with the largest export volume, sales volume and specifications of water meters in China. Zhejiang Water Metering Research Institute is established by relying on Ningbo Water Metering Co., Ltd., and is the only professional research institute in China's water metering industry. It has post-doctoral research stations, and also has nationally recognized water metering center laboratories, smart water metering, and measurement and control technology research institutes. .

The composition and support of smart water supply new business

Yao Ling gave a very accurate explanation for the concept of smart water: It is a new form of business resulting from the deep integration of modern information, communications technology, water process control and water management systems. Through the mining and use of water information resources, Smart Water effectively improves management efficiency and thus scientifically manages urban water work. It covers water supply, drainage, sewage treatment, and reuse of reclaimed water.

The above figure shows some of the management contents of water operations. The top part of the figure is the contents of water supply management, and the bottom part is the contents of other water management. Yao Ling proposed to deal with key smart water supply new business systems. These are process management based on measurement and control systems, as well as service informatization support systems within water services.

How to achieve smart water supply? From a methodological point of view, it is necessary to promote "integration of the two aspects", that is, the deep integration of industrialization and informatization and the implementation of "Made in China 2025." Many companies in the industry are still in the stage of Industry 2.0. By promoting smart water supply, most of the water supply enterprises will develop from electrification to automation and intelligent manufacturing. Its technical path is mainly supported by these three items: First, the application technology of the Internet of things; Second, measurement and control automation technology, the focus is measurement and control; Third, big data processing technology, mainly to provide solutions.

As we all know, the basic structure of the Internet is human-human information interaction. The Internet of Things, M2M, is the interaction between the machine and the machine. The current simple division can be divided into three levels, the bottom is the perception layer, namely the instrument and the sensor, the network layer is to solve the problem of data security transmission, the application layer will collect the data for business processing.

Smart meter's new role in water supply business

What are the new roles of smart water meters in the new water supply business? As we all know, the main function of water meters is the measurement and settlement of water consumption. With the development of new technologies, what functions can it add? Yao Ling summed it up. The expansion of the use of smart water meters, one is the application of automatic meter reading and water monitoring systems, such as water consumption measurement, period of water consumption monitoring and analysis, etc.; the second is participation in DMA pipeline leakage monitoring, that is, through timing, Centralized automatic meter reading and found leakage in the local area network; third, the intelligent water meter with integrated sensors, the use of water meter communication devices and installation location, comprehensive monitoring and remote transmission of pipe network water supply, including flow, water pressure, water quality, Leakage, conditions and other parameters; four is the smart meter plus electronic control valve, automatic control of the pipe network.

Key technologies for smart water meters and business application systems

First, as a smart water meter, its metering performance and long-term reliability are the most important. The judgment of the development trend of smart water meters: from smart meter 1.0 products to 2.0 products. The metering mechanism of the 1.0 product uses a mechanical water meter and there are some unfavorable conditions; the smart meter 2.0 product is a new technology using modern electronic flow meter, which makes the meter product have higher metering performance and long-term use reliability. Yao Ling further mentioned that there are indeed some technical problems with mechanical water meters, such as: high requirements for water quality, easy wear of shafting systems; not wide measuring range, and it is difficult to maintain characteristics and accuracy in the long term; large pressure loss and water supply High consumption; small flow characteristics are sensitive to temperature and cannot be corrected. The 2.0 products, there are three main categories, namely: ultrasonic water meter, electromagnetic water meter, jet water meter. The new national standards for water meters have now been revised and it has new requirements for the performance of water meters.

The second key technology is smart meter wireless network access technology and data security. For any terminal, data must be transmitted and must pass through the access network. According to the recommendations of the thirteenth five-year development plan for the water meter industry, there are three kinds of wireless access technologies that deserve attention: one is a wireless local area network, the other is a wireless wide area network, and there is a more promising wireless cellular wide area network, using wireless public Network communication, authorized frequency bands, low power consumption, wide coverage, security, and reliability are the future directions for the development of the Internet of Things. The following figure is a schematic of their application scenarios.

The third key technology is data mining and processing, modeling and application algorithm research. For the application layer in the Internet of Things, data application is the purpose. The common pipe network mathematical model includes the hydraulic, water quality, leakage, and energy consumption models of the pipe network.

Ningshui's work in the area of ​​smart water supply in recent years

Yao Ling introduced that in recent years, Ningshui has made some beneficial explorations in smart water supply. The first is the National Key Fund Project in cooperation with Zhejiang University - “Large Data Analysis and Theory and Methodology of Cloud Services for Urban Water Supply System Safety”. The main objectives are leakage network assessment and advanced leak detection and location technology. Leakage and detection can be detected in real time. The project Zhejiang University also invented a self-drifting in-pipe inspection ball to conduct a health survey of underground pipe networks, identify the presence of small leaks and locate them. Another research goal is the detection of pipeline network water quality and the location of pollution sources.

The second area is the postdoctoral research project launched in recent years. There are two issues related to smart water services. One is the research on the online detection method of key water quality indicators for water supply pipeline networks and the industrial application. The second is the electromagnetic detection technology. optimization.

The third aspect is the strategic cooperation with Huawei and operators, and promotes the application research of narrowband wireless network access technologies. The main cases are: One is to carry out the NB-IOT "ultrasonic water meter + integrated sensor" with Southeast Australia Water. The project also carried out a project on the NB-IOT “Non-Magnetic Sensing Water Meter” (with 1200 NB-IOT water meter access) and other projects with Shenzhen Water.

The fourth aspect is the research of smart water meter terminal products, such as smart water meter 2.0 products (electromagnetic, ultrasonic, jet water meters), wireless water meters (NB-IOT, GPRS, short-range wireless water meters, etc.), valve-controlled water meters, and so on.

(Original title: Ningbo Water Meter Yao Ling: Exploration and Application of Promoting Smart Water Supply New Business)