Veolia and its subsidiary Birdz have selected Orange Business Services to digitise its water services.
The two will digitise their water metering by connecting over 3 million water meters using a LoRa network over the next ten years.
The goal to read more than 70% of the meters remotely by 2027 follows a suceessful 12-month pilot in Toulese.
“Birdz has chosen Orange Business Services to help it make a strategic shift from a technology requiring deployment of a radio network infrastructure to a solution that is open, interoperable and reversible and also a solution which meets the needs of our customers,” according to a statement.
The network currently covers 30,000 municipalities and 95% of the population of Metropolitan France.
The smart water meters project will help reduce consumer bills by giving them access to real-time water usage data which they can use to identify potentials to enhance water efficiency.
For Veolia and Birdz, the project will help improve water management to ensure sustainable management of water resources and to enhance revenue collection and reduce non-revenue water through quick detection of water leaks and fraud.
The LoRa network will allow Birdz to focus on their core business and develop new services.
Birdz will also rely on Live Objects, the object and data management platform of Orange Business Services, to collect the mass of information from the meters.
Frédéric Van Heems, CEO of Veolia Water France, stated: “This project with Orange Business Services illustrates Veolia’s goal to digitalize our businesses and services.

SMART METER: Dr Helen Edmonds holds one of the smart meters, which will be installed through Penneshaw in the coming months.
Photo: SA Water.
Penneshaw residents might have noticed the presence of around 300 SA Water smart meters installed around the town, appearing in businesses and residences to help them better manage their water use and water bills.
“A data logger to be attached or built into each customers water meter will send water use information to their individual portal every 60 minutes, which can be viewed online at any time,” Dr Edmonds said.
“Once the portals are activated, there will also be an option for people to receive SMS or email notifications on their water use trends or inconsistencies, on either a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
“This interconnected system will help customers identify potential leaks or other faults in their plumbing, which may indicate periods or spikes of unexplained high water use.
It is expected that the instillation process of the smart meters is expected to be done by late September and completed by KI-based plumbers engaged through Fleurieu Civil, with all equipment, including the customer portals, to be operational from October.
Approximately 300 SA Water customers on the eastern end of Kangaroo Island receive their water from the Penneshaw Desalination Plant, which was originally built in 1999 and upgraded last year.
Penneshaw is capable of producing up to 120 million litres a year, and readily meets the area’s current average annual demand of 69 million litres.
It takes Penneshaw around two hours to turn sea water into fresh water for drinking, before it’s distributed through around 15 kilometres of pipes.

EIGHT thousand water meters will be installed free of charge in Pyigyitagun township with a total of US$20 million funding from Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), according to Mandalay City Development Committee (MCDC).
The committee will also increase the water charges in the region significantly.
JICA’s $20 million has been used for the purchase of pipes, wells, tanks, pumps and water meters.
It can cost K50,000 for a water meter and there could be additional expenses, depending on the location and length of the pipes required.
As an example, the authorities will dig three wells in Tampawati ward and water will be distributed from the tank which can hold up to 650,000 gallons of water.
It will use French Development Agency’s (AFD’s) loan of $40 million, ADB’s aid of $4 million, the EU’s aid of 8 million euro and AFD’s aid of 1 million euro to cover 90pc of the households in four townships.
It will also use the AFD’s 1.5 million euro aid for water distribution in Amarapura township and JICA’s $20 million aid to provide water access to 30pc in Pyigyitagun township.
The water distribution programme aims to provide access to potable water for 90pc of the population (more than 800,000 people) in four townships in Mandalay Region.
New rates of the water bills are charged once every three months.
The current rate of K1,500 has been increased to K4,000 for the smallest 0.5-inch pipe; the rate for the biggest 8-inch pipe is up from K50,000 to K70, 000.

Kamstrup taps Neuron ESB to drive transformation and agility.
Data islands are eliminated by modernizing Kamstrup’s existing point-to-point environment, facilitating reuse of data and functionality between applications.
"Kamstrup’s solutions are resonating in the market, demonstrated by its strong growth in revenue and employee count.
Neuron ESB aligns well with the global opportunity they are facing, helping poise the firm to play an even stronger role in the future of intelligent energy metering," said Marty Wasznicky, Vice President, Neuron ESB.
"All of the data communication is being handled by Neuron ESB, and we are well-positioned to fuel our vision for growth, internally and at our many projects and sites across the globe," said Frederiksen.
For more information, contact Neuron ESB sales at info@neuronesb.com.
About Neuron ESB Neuron ESB is an application, service and workflow integration platform that simplifies messaging, system integration and Web service enablement.
Neuron ESB has clients around the globe in a variety of industries.
To learn more, visit: www.neuronesb.com.
About Kamstrup Kamstrup A/S is a subsidiary of Danish energy company OK and a world-leading supplier of energy and water metering solutions.

KMC to install water meters in households of Wards 1-6.
The Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) will install water meters in every household in Wards 1 to 6 respectively in North Kolkata to assess wastage of drinking water.
The funding agencies like Asian Development Bank had suggested imposition of water tax in the city.
Banerjee said not only would water tax not be imposed but also stressed that supply of filtered water would be augmented.
Accordingly, the KMC took steps to augment water supply.
So, wastage of water will be stopped.
A senior civic official said that when roadside taps were there in the city, nearly 10 million gallon of filtered water was wasted daily.
After the abolition of roadside taps, the wastage has been reduced to a great extent.
Once the KMC has this figured, it will be easier to stop the wastage.
He said that in the next few years, there would be no water scarcity in the city including some pockets where there is a shortage for various reasons.