Spain’s Canal de Isabel II awards 315,000 smart water meters contract

Madrid public water utility Canal de Isabel II is to be supplied with 315,000 smart meters with NB-IoT connectivity by Vodafone Spain.

The project, with a value of more than €25 million (US$28 million) over the next five years, forms part of a broader initiative by Canal de Isabel II to digitalise its activities, including providing remote meter reading with more than 1.6 million meters across its service territory by 2026.

The meters in Vodafone’s lot will be supplied by Sagemcom, and will collect meter readings hourly for delivery on a daily basis.

This will significantly improve the data availability and billing, with the meters read currently only every two months.

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The award is the latest in Canal de Isabel II’s plans to implement smart metering, which began over a decade ago.

In 2017 a pilot was implemented with Vodafone, Telefónica and Orange and demonstrated the feasibility of NB-IoT for remote water meter reading, with the meters commonly in locations such as basements or underground meter rooms without an electricity supply.

Canal de Isabel II awarded the first smart meter contract for a 130,000 unit rollout to Telefónica and the Spanish metering provider Contazara at the end of 2021.

Remote meter reading with the first 50,000 customers was launched in February 2023.

In March, Orange and Spanish water meter supplier Hidroconta were awarded a contract to digitalise more than 100,000 smart meters, including the supply of 9,000 concentrators, for Canal de Isabel II.

“The remote reading of water meters is an important part of the digital transformation of the management of the water cycle, which should allow a much more responsible and sustainable use of a scarce resource,” said Gabriel Aparicio, head of billing and responsible for the project in Canal de Isabel II.

“With it, it will be possible to offer end users a better service thanks to real-time knowledge of their consumption, in addition to additional benefits such as remote management of smart meters, automatic leak detection, etc.”

Vodafone reports its water metering solution as a comprehensive offering for the collection and delivery of meter data, including a middleware/device manager as a single tool for connectivity and data collection, as well as a range of tools for configuration and visualisation.