WEEM – IoT Based Water and Electrical Energy Management for Smart Cities

Problem Statement
“India is facing the worst water crisis in its history, and 21 Indian cities will run out of groundwater by 2020”-new report from the NITI Aayog.
“Electricity Demand in India Will Almost Triple Between 2018 and 2040”-World Bank.
Metro water teams raid houses tapping water with small motors, which yielded less water to neighbour residence in Chennai-TOI

One of the reason behind this crisis is over exploitation and not being aware of conservation. Even though, there is no proper technology to support water supply board to monitor and control water usage.

WEEM Concept
WEEM Concept proposes long term water and electricity access to everyone with controlled usage. Each house in a city will be equipped with WEEM Water Manager Device (WMD) and Electricity Manager Device (EMD) that will measure consumption in real-time. With the aid of Wi-Fi and BLE, device can able to communicate with IoT Gateway device for sending data to server.

Server is managed by water and electricity provider in Control Room and they can monitor city’s real-time usage with the help of WEEM Devices. Consumption limit can be set day/week/month basis by the provider to prevent over usage of resources. When there is usage found beyond the limit, then control room can able to control that particular house consumption by sending command through Gateway to WMD or EMD.

Water Management
WEEM WMD has Hall Effect based flow level sensor for measuring water usage, flow control valve and a ESP32 based wireless device for sending data to an IoT Gateway.

Metro supply and underground water are the main source of water consumption. Water usage limit need to be set by Water Supply Board based on water availability and it’s demand. Since these WEEM WMD’s are connected devices, set value can be even fixed as day wise.

WMD will continuously measure the water usage using flow sensor. Once the water usage exceeds the limit, alert will be generated in server end and water supply will be controlled using flow control valves.

Electric Energy Management
This follows same concept as like Water management in the way of monitoring and control. Whereas, EMD has a Current Transformer (CT), Voltage sensing IC, Switching Contractor and ESP32 based wireless device. Electricity board has to set use limit in KW or Units, when exceeds server will command the EMD to trip the contactor. These set limits calculated based on power generation, renewable energy availability and seasonal consideration.

How effectively these data can be used?
1. Providers can analyse resource consumption in day/week/seasonal wise and can supply accordingly.
2. With aid of this much data, future prediction can be made using Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.
3. Rain water harvesting can also be monitored by just adding one more flow sensor.
4. Each consumer can monitor their water and electricity usage with help of mobile application. This can help in creating self awareness.