Northern Ireland water successfully trials wize smart metering technology to improve the efficiency of its service

In 2022, Northern Ireland Water decided to conduct a trial of differing smart water metering technologies to understand their capabilities and viability, with AMI solutions WIZE, NBIOT and DIEHL´s IZAR being tested. Smart metering has been highlighted as one of the transformational, future investment opportunities in their long-term vision , which looks to improve operational and capital efficiency whilst delivering enhanced service and value for customers. The programme introduces new innovative technologies, methodologies and approaches to achieve better outcomes and address root cause issues through data, evidence and analytics.

Northern Ireland Water chose SUEZ to deploy the AMI solutions at Queen’s University Belfast.
Seventy meters were installed across Queen’s University Belfast sites along with one transmitter to understand the quality of reach. This trial has successfully shown how the WIZE solution implemented by SUEZ can handle one of the particular challenges of smart metering: ensuring signal resilience across the territory and underground with minimal infrastructure.

The gateway, hosted on the Ashby Tower, a university building and one of the taller buildings of the city, covered a range of distance of more than 4.5 miles in a built-up area and at the furthest point. While the locations of the meters have significant impact on the transmission conditions – deep boundary boxes with heavy cast iron metal lids are particularly troublesome – the trial provided a 100% connectivity rate for WIZE meters and showed there has been strong consistent signal since the commencement of the trial, in the deepest boundary box, under the heaviest lid.