South East Water scales digital utility program with Lentic®

Staged deployment of 1 million digital devices managed through Lentic® drives water savings, customer experience and sustainable practices.

Cutomers and Challenges

South East Water, similar to many other water utilities, operates in an increasingly complex landscape: Climate change, a growing population, ageing networks, and heightened customer expectations are competing for attention and resources. All this while the utility works to maintain affordability for customers.

South East Water, one of Australia’s largest water organisations delivers water and wastewater services to over 1.8 million people in Melbourne’s southeast region and manages over 27,000 km of pipeline. They supply 142 billion litres of drinking water and collect and treat more than 136 billion litres of wastewater each year. To work through challenges on multiple fronts, South East Water recognized the need to manage a digital transformation journey from vision to scale, with a dedicated digital utility division.

“Our customers expect digital offerings because they get them through other services…”

“It’s giving us granularity that we’ve never had before. It’s literally down to the pipe connecting into house and through to the main pipes in the street. We can detect leaks effectively in near real-time, long before they become a burst or a disruption to the customer.”

Andrew Foster Knight

GENERAL MANAGER DIGITAL UTILITY, SOUTH EAST WATER

Solution

In 2021 South East Water deployed one of Australia’s largest digital water meter rollouts. It leveraged the Lentic® IoT platform to initially connect 30,000+ digital water meters. Through Lentic®, each digital meter was managed through a water-specific rules and alarms.

South East Water’s digital transformation progressed from trial to a scaled IoT network. It enabled operations to manage unprecedented volumes of data in near real-time. The alignment of people, processes, and technologies, reinforced by a data-driven approach were key to the program’s success.

Lentic’s® rules engine, computer edge technology and data validation processes underpinned the successful management of thousands of devices at scale. They provided seamless streaming of accurate high-quality data in near real-time to customer billings. On the wastewater side, South East Water introduced a ‘Smart Sewer’ program featuring 2000 leakage monitoring devices to identify potential blockages or spills.

RESULTS

Data from over 92,000 digital meters deployed to households to date

South East Water transitioned from pilot to scale. It is realizing next-level customer experience supported by material customer benefits. On the operations side, the utility is facing improvements in network intelligence, water efficiency and resilience.  See results:

Digital meter data is supporting more sustainable water use and a reduction of water loss at scale.

South East Water has so far notified over 14,800 customers (16% of all customers) of continuous flow (water leaks) on their property.
South East Water has saved each customer $345 on average off their next quarterly bill, by sending a leak notification so the customer can fix the leak promptly. It’s likely that many of these customers would otherwise have not known about the leak until they received their next higher-than-usual quarterly bill. The median savings per customer is $86.
To date, customers have collectively saved over $5.4 million by detecting leaks that may have gone unnoticed. South East Water since introducing continuous flow notifications has saved over 1.2 GL of water, that’s equivalent to over 400 Olympic size swimming pools.

Iota proudly acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land on which we work and live, and pay respect to their Elders past, present and emerging. We acknowledge their songlines, cultural lore and continuing connection to the land and water. We recognise and value the rich cultural heritage and ongoing contributions of Aboriginal people and communities to our society across Australia.

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South East Water scales digital utility program with Lentic®

In 2021 South East Water deployed one of Australia’s largest digital water meter rollouts. It leveraged the Lentic® IoT platform to initially connect 30,000+ digital water meters. Through Lentic®, each digital meter was managed through a water-specific rules and alarms.

Data from over 92,000 digital meters deployed to households to date