Water and wastewater systems don’t run themselves. A lot of sophisticated monitoring and automated control goes into ensuring a community’s water needs are met day in and day out. These include things like monitoring and controlling:
- Pump status (on/off/hours run) and flow rates
- Water levels in wells and tanks
- Sluice gate positions
- Reservoir levels
- Intrusion alarms and security measures
One of the many challenges is making sure all this information is communicated efficiently and reliably. And that’s where ESTeem’s wireless radios come in.
As we have reviewed in previous blog posts, the three main reasons for using wireless communication are long distances, linking to inaccessible areas and mobility. Water and wastewater systems have all these challenges, and our wireless radios are perfectly suited to solve the unique challenges for water and wastewater applications.
Distance – Most water systems are spread over a large area and usually in difficult terrain. They spread over entire cities or sometimes entire counties. Providing communication between all the pumps, tanks, lift stations and processing areas can be very expensive using most other communication methods, such as leased line, fiber or cellular. Wireless radios provide accessibility to all assets of the system with the most cost-effective method.
Inaccessibility – Many of the sites (especially in a wastewater system) can be at the lowest points in the city and can be very difficult to provide communication. Most water systems have areas that deal with difficult terrain. Wireless radios can reliably link all the points in a network together for data collection and control.
Mobility – The modern work environment is wireless. Providing mobile access to data and troubleshooting information for operators and technicians in water systems is critical for their day-to-day operations and security/safety. ESTeem can provide access to these critical network components through either a direct wireless interface such as Wi-Fi or anywhere in the world through cellular gateways. Using a cellular gateway with a private wireless network is much cheaper than having a cellular radio at each site while providing the same level of remote access.
ESTeem’s broad line of wireless products can solve most water- and wastewater-related application and physical constraints. Contact us today to learn more.