Utility Systems launches flagship IOT smart water product

Sbonelo Mazibuko

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Utility Systems is proud to launch its innovative water management device, the WMD Mk5. This device has the potential to tackle the water management challenges faced by SA and the world, by empowering service providers to remotely monitor and control water meters.

The WMD Mk5, an Internet of things (IOT)-enabled device, is part of the next generation of Utility Systems’ Advance Metering Infrastructure (AMI) solutions: able to wirelessly transmit data to municipalities or water service provider databases and receive commands remotely.

Its capabilities include revenue realisation through prepaid and post-paid water metering, leak detection, credit management and flow limitation.

This, explains CEO Sbonelo Mazibuko, is “truly smart water management at its best, combining the perfect prepaid device with the ideal flow limitation device, and equally able to generate revenue or prevent water losses”.

The WMD Mk5 has the promise to advance the technoscape of SA’s municipalities, which badly need disruptive smart water innovations.

For instance, says the SA Local Government Association, or SALGA (2018), municipalities lose R7.2 billion worth of water every year through incompetent management of aspects including billing, and 61% of households don’t know how much water they use.

The WMD Mk5 uses an internationally recognised secure communication network, Sigfox, which is managed in SA by SqwidNet.

Sigfox is available in 65 countries, with one billion people covered. It enables greater meter interrogation, including retrieving meter readings, setting configuration parameters, and loading prepaid tokens. More importantly, perhaps, communicating using Sigfox is inexpensive and requires low power.

WMD Mk5s last 10-plus years in the field and have replaceable battery packs.

Mazibuko points, further, to the effect of the Cigfaro Revenue Summit, of which Utility Systems was a platinum sponsor, in helping CFOs, municipal managers and government officials to source innovative automated processes that enhance service delivery and realise optimal revenue.