Context
Shoalhaven Water provides water and wastewater services to approximately 48,000 properties across 5,000 km² on the NSW South Coast. During peak holiday periods, the regional population can increase dramatically, placing additional pressure on essential infrastructure.
Beginning its IoT journey in 2017, Shoalhaven Water identified LoRaWAN as an opportunity to extend digital monitoring beyond major SCADA-connected assets to thousands of smaller, geographically dispersed assets.
Today, this has evolved into a significant Council-wide LoRaWAN network supporting smart water metering, digital asset management and environmental and smart city applications.
The Challenge
Traditional SCADA and telemetry remain critical for infrastructure such as reservoirs, treatment plants, pumping stations and motorised valves. However, extending these systems or mobile connectivity to large numbers of smaller assets can be costly and complex.
Shoalhaven Water required a complementary platform that could provide low-cost, long-range connectivity, reduce reliance on mobile network operators, support battery-powered devices and avoid unnecessary congestion on its existing SCADA telemetry network.
The Solution
Meshed supports Shoalhaven Water with a managed private LoRaWAN network, complementing public LoRaWAN coverage and providing the service levels and operational control required for important utility applications.
The network connects smart water meters, including retrofit readers and digital meters, alongside an expanding range of water and wastewater sensors.
Applications include pressure and level monitoring, sewer manhole monitoring, pressure reducing valves, wastewater radar sensing, leak detection and remote asset monitoring.
Outcomes
The network provides a scalable communications layer between major SCADA-connected infrastructure and smaller distributed assets. Benefits include reduced reliance on mobile networks, automated data collection and improved visibility of water and wastewater infrastructure.
Importantly, LoRaWAN has demonstrated impressive performance across Shoalhaven's challenging geography, with links exceeding 20 km and testing achieving transmissions of up to 70 km under favourable conditions.
The same infrastructure can also support environmental monitoring, smart parking, waste sensing, people counting, traffic monitoring and other community applications, maximising Council's return on its network investment.
What began as an IoT research initiative has become strategic regional digital infrastructure, providing Shoalhaven Water with a flexible platform for smarter metering, proactive asset management and future innovation. A regional authority in the South West Slopes followed the same route for its metering rollout.
The network that was built to read meters turned out to be the network that could carry everything else.
