For residents with raw water connections at their properties, we will soon be commencing stage 2 of our smart meter replacement program.
This will involve the installation of raw smart water meters at your property.
Installation notices will be sent late September/early October, so keep an eye on the mailboxes!
We appreciate your cooperation as we work through this staged meter replacement program.
Since the installation of smart filtered water meters throughout this year, a number of local residents have benefited from the leak detection reports generated by the system.
And now there’s more good news for council, with the MRC Smart Meter Project announced as a finalist in the Local Government NSW's Excellence in the Environment Awards in the Water Management category.
The award recognises excellence in practical solutions for sustainable water management, with winners announced in mid-October.
This is a great nod to the hard work of our water services team!
Many of our residents have had the benefit of smart water meters on their properties for some time now. However the roll-out to the rest of the council area had to be put off because of the COVID-19 situation…
…but the good news is that we will be restarting the remaining areas of installation from July 7.
If you were notified that a smart filtered water meter was to be installed at your property, but are yet to have this take place, you can expect our contractors to install your new meter in the coming weeks.
Smart water meters are continuing to be installed throughout the Council area, and it’s already shown ways for customers to possibly save thousands of litres of water.
The real-time reads mean we can now use leak detection information to address potential issues that may have previously gone undetected.
We’re also getting a good overview of water consumption habits across the council.
To date we have:
- installed 3,400 filtered water meters in most townships since mid-March 2020.
- seen an average peak water usage around 9am most days with 38 litres per hour, and later peaking around 6pm with 31 litres per hour.
- used between 1.2 and 1.5 million litres per day. (This is lower than normal due to the recent rainfall and cool weather.)
- been alerted to 3.3 million litres of water as possible leaks at customer side in one month. This is the equivalent of nearly 40 million litres per year!
- followed up potential leaks with customers in an effort to save water and money!
For those interested in stats and figures, the link below will open a chart that gives an overview of the average hourly filtered water consumption and daily water consumption:
MiWater meter usage chart
Next Steps:
- Install the remaining 1,400 filtered water meters across the Council area
- Install around 3,700 raw water meters in the new financial year
- Develop portal for customers to monitor their own Smart Water meters and their usages over the next 12 months!