Sydney Water selects DataCol’s meter technology

Australian water supplier Sydney Water has chosen New Zealand-based metering company DataCol’s SevenX system to read its 1.3 million water meters across the city.

The new system enables meter readings to be submitted from the field through mobile phone networks, with the information transmitted directly to the billing system. Meter reader employees are therefore not required to return to base to upload routes or download readings every day.

The system can also capture images from the field, which can be useful to show issues like difficulty accessing a meter.

Sydney Water customer accounts and billing manager Colin Ridley said: "The DataCol solution is robust, reliable and also cost effective. It will help us more easily move towards more automated meter reading in the future."

DataCol CEO Bruce Franks said that Sydney Water continuously renews its water infrastructure and is making the investments to support and facilitate the growth the city is going to witness in the future.

"They are bringing about significant updates to the infrastructure and were looking for a partner who could support them through this transition and we are happy to be their vendor of choice," he said.

According to the Department of Planning and Infrastructure, Sydney currently has a population of 4.6 million people, with the number projected to rise to 5.6 million by 2031. The city is expected to be in need of 500,000 additional homes.

Sydney Water offers services to all of Sydney through 1.9 million connections, and has annual revenues of more than A$2bn ($1.83bn).

DataCol provides meter data collection and management services across electricity, gas, water and other sectors, and currently partners with several city councils and water authorities across Australasia.