Saving critical and depleting resources like water and electricity is the need of the hour. Residential Communities are always willing to take a genuine step forward to help save on IOT Enabled Maintenance. To encourage such critical assets in these initiatives and also look at cost-saving measures, ADDA conducted a webinar on ‘IOT Enabled Predictive and Preventive Maintenance’ on Saturday, August 7th, 2021.
The webinar was headed by a panel of experts who offered useful insights on how IOT based technology saves expenses on repairs and electricity while monitoring and controlling community assets.
The Panel consisted of :
- Vrijlal Sukumaran, RWA Process Consultant
- Abilash Haridass, Co- Founder, Chief of Growth & Strategy, WEGoT Utility Solutions
- Vishal Masurkar, Deployment Manager, ADDA
- Chaitra ME, Associate Deployment Manager, ADDA
Table of Contents
The Webinar Takeaways
How Proactive and Real Time Monitoring Keep your Amenities Healthy and save cost?
Common Complaints from point of view of Residents, RWAs and vendors:
- “No affordable technologies available to monitor the processes followed and complied with regulatory requirements” – MC
- “Borewell working but stopped yielding water and procuring tanker water” – Resident
- “Frequent change of operator is a challenge to adhere due to the complicated processes followed at each site” – Vendor
- In the total spend analysis of Associations, only 25% of Associations take corrective action. 75% of the Associations fail to take corrective action and are helpless to analyse the expense incurred by total maintenance.
- Only 20% of the communities are automating technologies and only 70% outsource to Facility Management companies which do not offer quantifiable measure for performance.
Benefits of Trackbot for STP maintenance
- Scheduling of tasks whether it is hourly, daily, monthly or yearly task like tank cleaning (if not followed timely, it will give real time alert).
- Pro active measures so that any critical amenities don’t suffer downtime and residents are not impacted from that.
Summary of Challenges faced by RWAs and Associations and their solutions:
Challenge: Ensuring consistency of water quality and identify issues at early stage which is critical.
Solution: Go for an opex model where you won’t have to take any responsibility and you can pass on the onus with the IOT provider.
Challenge: Tracking of individual equipments, their status and repair history installed in different amenities like STP, WTP,CCTV etc.
Solution: Trackbot onboards every such equipment installed in your system along with repair history. QR code easily identifies each equipment installed.
Challenge: Borewells going dry or not utilized properly.
Solution: Automation of borewell operations with controllers, flow meters, level sensors through Trackbot.
Challenge: Access to technologies for real time monitoring and proactive measures for IOT enabled maintenance
Solution: Real time capability to monitor all of your amenities including STP, WTP, pool, etc with auto ticketing mechanism in Trackbot.
Challenge: Frequent change of operator to follow the site-specific processes
Solution: Trackbot automates critical processes and enforces operator to follow your STP codes to ensure process adherence.
Challenge: Difficulty in repair of equipments on time.
Solution: See whole history of every equipment installed with potential recommendations to act upon.
Common Challenges with Community Water consumption and their Solutions
Mechanical Water Meter Disadvantages can be combated with advantages of IOT based ultrasonic water sensors.
Challenge: Inaccurate records airflow and reverse airflow
Solution: Certified ultra accurate records
Challenge: No real time monitoring
Solution: Cloud enabled for real time decision making
Challenge: Not tamper-proof
Solution: Real time exception alerts
Challenge: Needs periodic calibration
Solution: Lifetime calibration free
WEGOT’s dashboard which integrates entire water component of a campus into one platform –
- Monitors usage
- Detect leakes and shutoffs remotely
- Usage analytics
- Billing and payments based on usage
- Borewell optimizer
- Tanker vendor management
- Notifications
Total of 3 billion litres of water have been saved by WEGOT IOT driven technology.
The Q&A Session:
Q: What is the maintenance required for a typical STP?
A: Blowers in a typical STP setup have to be run adequately, filters have to be operated weekly and diffusers have to be replaced once after every 3-4 years.
Q: What are the solutions to measure water consumption in absence of individual water meters?
A: Simple solution – IOT enabled maintenance tech which includes combination of water quality or flow sensors. This gets connected to the internet and displayed on phone with all analytical information. Combination of sensors, connectivity and application will provide insights or data collected from sensors.
Q: What is the STP impact on energy/power savings?
A: When Automations and sensors (inflow to outflow) are connected, you will get 1000 liters of sewage which would be processed through aeration process and get filtered. Whole set of process and automation based on sensors will give you the data on how any of these processes are saving the energy.
Q: How is a prepaid electricity meter useful in an apartment, considering that each flat will have individual e-meter provided by BESCOM?
A: The system followed in North India, particularly in Delhi and NCR is not prevalent here in South India. North India follows prepaid system of electricity billing so they have meters, digital wallet recharge etc.
Q: Is there any tracker for preventive and proactive maintenance which schedules dashboard for the asset management?
A: This is what all IOT solutions adhere to. A dashboard will notify you of any exceptions, allowing you to schedule any alerts.
