Waterman Irrigation Standpipes Saves Time, Money, and Water With AirLink Raven XE

A subsidiary of Western Australia’s Industrial Automation, Waterman Irrigation designs and develops modular irrigation systems.

Challenges

With severe drought conditions, the use of water from the distributed water supply network in Western Australia increases dramatically. Access facilities with standpipes located throughout the area allow water tankers to fill up and take water out of the grid, and an honor system was setup in which the customer manually recorded water usage in a notebook stored in an enclosure near the standpipe. Desperate times made the honor system less reliable and left local councils and taxpayers to pay for water that was used but not accounted for. In addition, the monthly process of performing manual notebook inspections at each standpipe location was a very time-consuming and costly process. With the cost burden of unpaid water usage growing, local governments turned to Waterman Irrigation for a remote monitoring solution that would allow councils to accurately track and efficiently collect data on water consumption.

Solution

Connected by the Sierra Wireless AirLink® Raven XE intelligent Ethernet gateway, Waterman Irrigation’s remote monitoring system requires the customer to use an RFID card to open a solar-powered control panel that provides access to the water supply. The recorded data is then stored in an on-site RTU and made available to local councils using reliable 3G broadband communication provided by the Raven XE.

The Raven XE enables a rapidly deployable remote data collection solution in any water standpipe location, no matter how remote. The AirLink device has a compact form factor, enabling easy integration within existing infrastructure and enclosures. The rugged design of the Raven XE, including a sturdy aluminum case and a wide operating temperature range, ensures it is strong enough to perform in the harsh field environments of Western Australia. The combination of the comprehensive intelligence of embedded ALEOS™ and easy-to-use AirLink management software simplifies deployment and management of the solution, ultimately lowering total cost of ownership.

The Waterman Irrigation remote monitoring system with Raven XE is installed in every roadside standpipe control panel and linked to a government server using an IPsec-compliant VPN for data security. Now local councils can access a simple web interface to determine the amount of water used by each customer, for billing and analysis. Remote data transfer and system control eliminate the need for travel to each standpipe location for manual data collection or to selectively disable access to standpipes. By eliminating routine field visits, the solution drastically reduces operating expenses.

“Our solution has allowed local councils to take control of an unfortunate situation,” said Henk de Graff, managing director of Industrial Automation Group. “The Raven XE device provides the ability to collect critical information, which is priceless.” 

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