SMART WATER METRE INTEGRATION: TRANSFORMING REAL ESTATE PROJECTS INTO WATER-EFFICIENT COMMUNITIES

Discover how smart water metre integration is reducing costs, promoting sustainability, and fostering data-driven decision-making. Learn about the advantages, benefits, and environmental impact of smart water metres, and explore the way forward for this transformative technology in India.

- India is urbanising at a rapid pace. Urban population has experienced a six-fold increase since 1951, growing from 62.4 million to 377.1 million in 2011, and it is estimated that 590 million will live in Indian cities by 2030, which is twice the entire population of the USA.

With increasing urbanisation, we are also seeing a rise in urban buildings to house the growing population. High rise residential apartments now constitute to a bulk of urban living. These concentrated dwellings have put pressure on city infrastructure including water supply and waste water management. More and more urban communities are depending on ground water and or tanker water to meet their demand. With increasing urbanisation this trend would continue. The lack of adequate water supply and increasing demand therefore puts the onus on communities to manage demand for water.

Surprisingly, while the apartment dwellers are used to paying for electricity by metre, most of the communities pay for water as part of the common area maintenance charge. Hence water consumption and charges for them are ‘invincible’. This results in inadequate control over consumption and leakages resulting in per capita consumption beyond acceptable limits.

MEASURING EVERY DROP OF WATER - HOW DOES IT HELP?

Peter Drucker has famously said, “you cannot control what you don’t measure”

With advances in technologies, it is now possible to accurately measure water consumption in individual apartments based on their actual water consumption. This enables housing societies to bill for water in an equitable manner and create economic disincentives for high consumption. Smarter communities are already part of this growing trend towards water efficient communities - from being invisible to invoiceable.