Holiday village Strazhata is located close to the city of Pleven and consists of 60 individual houses intended as vacation homes. Most of the properties are not occupied year-round. ThingsLog implemented a solution for water monitoring, remote metering, and utilities reporting.
Business case: remote control over utilities metering for hospitality and property management
The village spreads on a large, secluded plot of land in the mountains, away from any inhabited areas. The distant location, as well as the intermittent occupation, has made the collection the individual water meters readings very difficult. Analog input gathering involves a dedicated headcount visiting the homes after an appointment with each house owner, which caused inconvenience for both parties and recurring overdue utility bills. The delayed payments would result in shutting down the power supply of the entire village and respectively in disrupted experience for the individual house owners.
The village manager has been looking for a telemetry solution that can deliver water and energy consumption data remotely. Another important requirement was that the communication method must be independent from mobile networks due to unreliable network coverage at the location. ThingsLog, a trusted provider of IoT products and monitoring solutions, has proposed a viable alternative for water monitoring, remote metering, and utilities reporting.
ThingsLog benefits: a complete solution for remote water monitoring and metering
ThingsLog provides a wide range of water flow metering solutions. For the specific client needs, we have come up with our tried and tested remote monitoring solution for water consumption. To meet the requirement for independence of telecom coverage in the remote location, the data loggers in this implementation run on LoRaWAN-based communication protocol.
As a first step, our team has conducted a comprehensive site study and designed the network coverage. This step has secured steadfast and stable connectivity in the long run, with the optimal number of LoRa gates furnished for the specific terrain layout.
As a second step, ThingsLog technical personnel has installed and connected the LoRa gates. The LoRa network has come online throughout the village.
Thirdly, smart water meters with built-in LoRa connectivity have been installed. With that final step all the necessary infrastructure for the solution was up and running.
The ThingsLog analytics platform facilitates segmentation of the water distribution networks. This means crosschecking the reading of the main water/meter with the aggregated readings from the supplemental water/electrical meters connected to each individual household. The platform supports configurable alarm notifications and provides 24/7 visibility and monitoring of leaks, outages, and accidents, spotting abnormally high power and water use, theft risk management, etc.
In conclusion: a win-win situation for everyone – the manager, the owners, and the utility
The village manager leverages the water monitoring solution to keep track on resource consumption in the holiday village – individually and aggregated totals. ThingsLog has enabled continuous logging and monthly consumption data reporting to both utility companies and house owners. At any time, each house owner has a straightforward access to their individual consumption data, as delivered on the ThingsLog mobile app from their submetering devices. Accurate measurement, verifiable consumption reporting and billing have improved receivables collection and customer satisfaction.
