ACCIONA Agua deploys first smart water grid in Cáceres

The smart water grid ACCIONA Agua is rolling out in Cáceres - which becomes the first Spanish city to get such an advanced network - is part of a wider European project called SmartWater4Europe, involving 20 other participants. ACCIONA Agua's Service, Automation and Control, and R&D and Innovation, departments are to collaborate over four years to install the new system. And they will analyze and process data obtained from the project to develop a business management software platform that will be exportable to any other city in Europe. Cáceres, already part of the Spanish Smart Cities Network (RECI), thus becomes a pioneer by becoming one of the first cities in Europe to incorporate the Smart City concept as far as water supply is concerned.

1. Private homes

Installation of water meter with transmitter (A) in the home, data gathered and transmitted via special emitter (B) at 868MHz frequency, making possible transmission in the city's historic quarter.

2. Public buildings

Devices housed in public buildings gather all data in their reception area, communicating the information continuously to general receivers located on the city's outskirts.

3. Public services

Devices installed on the city's public fixtures, such as street lamps.

4. Common receivers

Equipment that requests and stores data from meters, flow meters and the sensor network, directly or via lower-level equipment, before transmitting it on to the Data Control Center.

• Will benefit 10.000 users (domestic and non-domestic)
• Will manage 35% of registered users in the city
• Will monitor 74 km of piped network
• Will detect any infrastructure improvements needed

Profiles

Cayetano Cases is an industrial and mechanical engineer. Since 2012, he has directed Cáceres Water Service.

Alejandro Beivide is an automation and industrial electronics engineer, head for the past three years of Automation and Control in ACCIONA Agua's Services, O&M and Desalination department.

Cayetano Cases, director of Cáceres Water Service, explained: "It was a challenge to choose Cáceres since it has a historic city center and is a Unesco World Heritage Site. Access in the center is enormously complicated. Radio communications are also extremely difficult due to the narrowness of its streets and the old stone buildings." Added to this is the problem of being unable to install visible radio equipment and antennae in a historic city because of its conservation status. The project will see a single software platform integrating a wide range of technologies, including: daily remote readings of users' meters, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), remote control data, a large number of sensors to monitor water quality, and a mathematical model for predicting the behavior of the water supply. All of this information combined in one platform will allow the development of advanced business management strategies.

Novelties and benefits

The management system - explained Alejandro Beivide, head of ACCIONA Agua's Automation and Control department - will be governed by a business intelligence platform, integrated with a communications system developed using different broadband links with low frequency devices, radio systems, and high-frequency transmission to reach the Cáceres City Council trunked network system. The joining of the two systems, broadening and strengthening the network, justifies defining Cáceres as a Smart City as far as the use of telecommunications channels is concerned. "In what relates to telecoms, this will be a landmark in the development of Smart Metering systems and will result in the use and optimization of all the existing networks," said Alejandro.

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