Smart Irrigation Tech for Effective Water Savings

Smart irrigation tech helps CA Businesses and Residents Conserve Water during Drought

Drought leads to smart irrigation tech. Throughout California, residents and businesses are striving to comply with new water conservation rules aimed at addressing severe drought conditions. This technology is definitely helping many of them avoid fines and penalties while preserving attractive landscaping with the help of advancements.

Companies throughout California offer smart irrigation control that measures the depletion of plant moisture and also adjusts the watering schedule accordingly.

Relying on 24×7 connectivity to sensors in the soil from a company called Numerex, the system enables the collection and analysis of large amounts of weather and soil-condition data to determine the optimum irrigation schedule. This smart irrigation tech is pivotal for such advanced systems.

Families are saving 9,000 gallons of water annually on average by replacing their standard clock timer with a smart irrigation controller. Many water districts are also now offering rebates for using ETwater smart irrigation systems to promote smart irrigation tech further.

Challenge

In the irrigation industry, ETwater is redefining the space with smart irrigation. Their cloud-based platform relies on Numerex’s 24×7 connectivity enabling the collection and analysis of large amounts of weather and soil-condition data. This information is used, thanks to smart irrigation tech, to determine optimum irrigation scheduling.

Significantly more sophisticated than a traditional irrigation controller that only controls sprinklers’ frequency, start times and duration; ETwater’s smart irrigation control measures the depletion of plant moisture and adjusts the watering schedule accordingly. This strategic smart irrigation tech approach saves money and preserves precious resources.

Faced with connectivity challenges in 2008, ETwater partnered with Numerex to provide consistent, strong, reliable connectivity to remote field resources. Six years later, as technology advanced, and the volume of resources increased, ETwater proactively decided to upgrade their 2G devices to next generation technology. Looking to seamlessly transition their entire national footprint, ETwater trusted Numerex to facilitate the migration project using smart irrigation tech innovation.

“We trusted Numerex for this migration project because of their respected M2M network and connectivity expertise,” said Lee Williams, SVP Product at ETwater. “We have an ambitious and highly capable cloud-based service that we provide to our customers but we don’t want our clients to ever worry about network connectivity.”

Smart Irrigation Tech Solutions

Powered by the Numerex Network, ETwater’s cloud-based M2M management connection saves time, enabling the remote monitoring of multiple client sites, conserving water and reducing labor costs. In drought-stricken areas like California, and other areas with water restrictions, this can have a huge impact on water usage and efficiency because of innovations in smart irrigation tech.

Results

The certified 4G platform retains previous functionality and now offers ETwater customers real-time, remote management, from any computer, tablet or smartphone. With next-generation protocols established, network operators can more effectively manage availability and quality of bandwidth and spectrum for ETwater’s remote commercial landscape customer locations, further enhancing the smart irrigation tech experience.

“Reliability is also a huge factor for us in establishing true ROI,” Williams said. “While improvements in reliability may be less tangible, they are significant in terms of how customers think about and align with our services.”

Now, if unauthorized changes or interruptions occur in watering schedules, an email alert is automatically triggered. If a main line valve breaks, the system automatically shuts the irrigation system down. In addition to seeing savings in provisioning and labor costs, ETwater anticipates seeing cost reductions in data usage over time through their smart irrigation tech framework.

“Since migrating to 4G using the Numerex Network, we have experienced enhanced reliability and connectivity, as well as improvements in radio technology support through smart irrigation tech.”