For some years now, the planet has been suffering from a shortage of natural resources. In this context, it is important to know how to optimise and rationalise them as far as possible.

Although the quantity and quality of water in Andorra do not seem to be a cause for concern, FEDA would like to have as much information as possible on the consumption of fresh water.

The leitmotiv of the project is to control the cold water in FEDA's buildings in order to integrate them into the company's energy efficiency plan.

The system will make it possible to know in real time the consumption of cold water, and compare it with the consumption averages to avoid leaks or unnecessary losses of water.

WATER CONSUMPTION PROJECT

In order to monitor water consumption, the appropriate water meters are installed for each building, depending on the pipe cross-section.

Each meter is fitted with a pulse emitter system, parameterised by NFC.

Each pulse corresponds to 1 liter of water, with a duration of 300ms per pulse.

To read the pulses, Industrial Shields PLCs (Programmable Logic Controllers) are installed, which allow up to 12 analogue and digital inputs/outputs, and different communication protocols.

The communication protocol to be used in this case is TCP MODBUS, a standard industrial protocol also used by the Circutor PowerStudio software, which works over Ethernet.

The PLCs are programmed with C++; they pack and send the pulses with a total value of liters for each of the meters, in order to avoid losses due to collisions or lack of communication with the buildings. Thus, even if there is a communication failure, the emitted pulses will never be lost.

In addition, the PLC has a µSD card type memory to store the variables and, even in the event of a power cut, the total number of pulses recorded would not be lost.

Via MODBUS TCP, the PLCs send the frames over Ethernet to be captured by the SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) system.