Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) has installed a total of 595,755 smart water meters across Dubai, said a top official at the 20th Water, Energy, Technology and Environment Exhibition (Wetex 2018), which opened today (October 23).

This is 80.6 per cent of the total number of water meters in the emirate, said Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, the managing director and chief executive of Dewa, adding that Dubai was on track to become a smart water meters city by the end of 2019.

All of Dewa's projects are aligned with the Dubai Plan 2021, which aims to make it a smart, integrated and connected city.

"We are working to make Dewa the world’s first digital utility to use autonomous systems for renewable energy and storage, while expanding our use of artificial intelligence (AI) and digital services. The ‘Smart Applications via Smart Grids and Meters’ is one of the initiatives, Dewa launched to support the Smart Dubai initiative to make Dubai the smartest and happiest city in the world," remarked Al Tayer.

"In addition to their role in the smart transformation, operational efficiency and reducing water losses, smart meters provide many benefits to customers and help them monitor their consumption accurately and instantaneously, anytime, anywhere. This contributes to promoting the responsible use and sustainability of resources," added Al Tayer.

Abdullah Obaidullah, the executive vice-president of water and civil at Dewa, said the Dubai utility had an advanced infrastructure for smart water meters that has so far identified 20,000 water leakage cases, 4,700 faults, and 1,400 extra-load cases.

"This resulted in total savings of about Dh52.6 million ($14.6 million). The ‘High Water Usage Alert’, under Dewa’s Green Dubai, helps customers discover possible leaks in their water connections. The system sends instant notifications to the customer if there is any unusual increase in consumption, to check the internal connections and repair any leaks. This contributes to reducing incurred costs by limiting water wastage," he explained.

Dewa recently won the ‘Smart Water Company Award of the Year’ at the Global Water Summit 2018 that took place recently in Paris, France.

"This was in recognition of the utility’s efforts in implementing one of the largest smart water meter infrastructure projects in the world, allowing it to increase availability of meter readings to 99.9 per cent," he added.-TradeArabia News Service