To enable monitoring of hard-to-reach assets, Melbourne Water deployed Grundfos Telemetry Units across 38 of its most critical retarding basins. The units’ continuous, high-quality data supports flood-risk management and maintenance planning.
Melbourne Water
A statutory authority owned by the Victoria State Government, Melbourne Water manages and protects the Greater Melbourne region’s major water resources.
The situation
Water authorities around the world face the same challenge: they must manage hundreds or thousands of underground water assets that are difficult to access and costly to monitor. Critical above-ground assets such as plants, pump stations, tanks and reservoirs are commonly monitored, but belowground assets like manholes and pipelines have been literally left ‘in the dark’, due to accessibility and technology challenges as well as the high costs involved.
Melbourne Water wanted to monitor several sites that are typically below-ground and/or low-lying assets, in order to provide a higher level of service to their customers. These sites had previously been unmonitored due to challenges in access, location and power.
The project needed to select, test and implement low-cost monitoring hardware that would:
- Not require mains power;
- Connect to the clients’ existing IT infrastructure; and
- Roll out within a reasonable time frame and at a lower cost.
The solution
SAGE Automation, a leading provider of innovative engineering solutions for industrial automation and control services, delivered a low-cost, maintainable solution for monitoring thirty-eight of Melbourne Water’s most critical retarding basins.
The solution incorporated Grundfos Telemetry Unit dataloggers, field sensor devices and SAGE’s STRATUS cloud-based SCADA service for interim alarming and visualisation. Field works were managed by ALS Global and supported by SAGE.
Grundfos Telemetry IoT/4G is a self-contained datalogger / remote telemetry unit with:
- Internal battery pack
- IP68 unit enclosure
- Either an IoT (NB-IoT/ CaT-M1) or 4G (with 3G/2G fallback) modem
- Auto-switching internal and external antenna options
- Software configurable AI, CI, DI, Modbus and SDI-12 communication options
- Integrated submersion sensor
- Local diagnostic points
- Intelligent alarm reporting
It communicates with the Grundfos Connect Sensor Platform, DNP3/ WITS DNP3 Masters, or FTPS servers.
Key benefits
Grundfos supplied:
- Grundfos Telemetry IoT/4G units
Facts:
- Topic: Retarding basin level monitoring
- Location: Melbourne, Australia
- Customer: Melbourne Water
The outcome
The solution provided a low-cost, maintainable means of monitoring critical retarding basins. Melbourne Water was better able to manage storm water flows by receiving live alerts of potential overflows, enabling them to pre-warn residents of potential flooding events.
This increased visibility of its sites helped Melbourne Water improve their customer experience and environmental management, and reduce capital expenditure.
The solution won the Victorian Australian Water Association’s Infrastructure Project Award in December 2018 and went to national awards in 2019.
This project was originally implemented by Metasphere, a company acquired by Grundfos in 2023. The full Metasphere range of remote monitoring products and solutions for water and wastewater networks and environmental applications is now available through Grundfos.
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