Smart sewer level monitoring in Sydney

Since deploying an advanced sewer level monitoring solution in 2017, over 5,000 sites across Sydney now provide critical real-time data, helping Sydney Water reduce blockages and spills.

Sydney Water

Australia’s largest water utility, providing water, wastewater, recycled water and some stormwater services to Greater Sydney.

Grundfos supplied

Sewer level monitoring solution
Grundfos Telemetry IoT/4G units

Facts

Topic: Sewer level monitoring
Location: Sydney, Australia
Customer: Sydney Water

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The situation

Sydney Water, Australia’s largest water utility, has an ambition to improve their sewer level monitoring capability as part of their ‘Lifestream Strategy’ initiative. The aim is to reduce the number of sewer blockages and uncontrolled spills of raw sewage in their network, which cause public health and environmental issues, leading to reputational damage and fines imposed by regulatory bodies.

They required a cost-effective, reliable monitoring solution that could provide business critical data and alarms associated with high water level events potentially indicating blockages at points in the network.

In 2017, Sydney Water selected Grundfos Telemetry IoT/4G remote telemetry units coupled with dBi Ultrasonic Level Sensors from Pulsar Measurement to provide sewer level monitoring at 200 locations initially.

The solution

The sewer level monitoring solution collects sewer level data at various points in the network. Equipment at each monitoring point includes a remote telemetry unit coupled with an ultrasonic level sensor to collect sewer level data to monitor for blockages and uncontrolled spills at various locations within the network.

The measured sewer level values are sampled and stored with time stamps at periodic intervals, with the data communicated directly to SWC’s IICATS SCADA system via the 3G network and using the DNP3 protocol. The high-water level alarms received by SWC from the RTUs allow them to deploy operations teams to unblock potential sewer blockages before they occur.

Advance warning:

Sydney Water now has access to business critical data and alarms associated with high water level events potentially indicating blockages in the network.

Compliance:

Sydney Water was able to comply with health and environmental regulations.

Reputation:

Reducing the number of sewer blockages and uncontrolled wastewater spills in the network helps Sydney Water avoid any reputational damage.

Smooth delivery:

The project was delivered without any safety incidents or lost time.

Expansion:

The project was so successful a further 5,000 sites have been deployed across the Metropolitan Sydney area since it commenced in 2017.

The outcome

To date, over 200 sites have been commissioned across Sydney, providing SWC good visibility of their sewer network performance. Since 2017, a further 5,000 sites have been deployed across the Metropolitan Sydney area.

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.

    
        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.