Narz systems launches "Smart Water Grid" pilot project for intelligent water networks worldwide in partner cooperation.

Record summers are showing water suppliers, grid operators and in some places already users in the population that running water from the tap, in some cases, can be less self-evident than electricity from the socket. The drinking water suppliers have problems with their extraction plants as well as their distribution networks with the buffers available in them and the drinking water quality with the weather conditions becoming warmer and warmer. Therefore, narz systems firmly believes that there is also a need for a smart grid for water and this is exactly where narz systems would like to start with this development project.

Narz systems has had its own modern "audako" software platform for monitoring infrastructure facilities, among other things, since 2011. With its existing product "audako", Narz systems already operates information technology networks for more than 100 drinking water suppliers - of all sizes - and has huge amounts of data on drinking water production, distribution and quality. This includes water levels, groundwater levels, flow rates, consumption, pH values, turbidity values and many other measured values. These data are available in the narz systems data center as time series for evaluations and can be used for the project with the consent of the respective customers.

The development within the scope of the project is to take place on the basis of the existing solution audako and supplement the necessary solution modules there. audako already has functionalities that benefit the project: High-performance memory for time series, connection of telecontrol technology according to e.g. IEC standards and a web-based interface with dashboards, schemas, simple evaluations and reports. narz systems has extensive experience in software development due to the independent development of your basic software as well as a professional development team.

With the project "Smart Water Grid" narz systems wants to go significantly further and integrate all components of a water network compared to the state of the art, which usually only covers the neuralgic points of a network. From the deep well, which is already equipped with monitoring technology in many places, to the customer meter - which is not yet recorded today - all data is to flow together in a central platform in order to be able to map a digital twin of the supply network. With a digital twin of the network, we want to help operators reduce losses and optimize network utilization. The targeted stage of development at the end of the project includes a functional software solution that customers can later use either from the cloud or on their own systems.

The market potential is very large; almost every European household is connected to a public water supply network. According to the Federal Environment Agency, there are 5,845 water utilities in Germany alone, compared to around 3,000 in Switzerland. There is a worldwide market for this solution, and supply networks exist around the globe. To counteract both the remaining technical and economic development risk, narz systems has installed a project advisory board of potential customers. The project advisory board is composed of qualified candidates from utilities of different sizes to best cover requirements across all utility size categories.

The development of a "Smart Water Grid" with sustainability factor also convinced the European Union to support the project with funding from the European Regional Development Fund, which narz systems particularly values. Thanks to public funding, we are now able to implement this development within the estimated time frame and to the planned extent. Here also a thank you to the partners involved in the project advisory board in this meaningful development project.  

More information on this smart project will follow.