Leaders in Water Meter Monitoring

Outpost Central has been servicing Australasian water utilities for over 10 years during which time we’ve come across virtually every make and model of water meter used in Australasia. Outpost products are now a core part of day-to-day operations for numerous water supply utilities across a diverse range of applications:

Large Customer Demand Management

We’ve worked with utilities and their partners throughout Australia to deliver large customer demand management and engagement programs to reduce demand across the network.

AMI for hard to read meters

When it's difficult to read a meter, whether because of OH&S requirements or just because the water meter is in the middle of no-where, Outpost smart meters are a cost effective way of reading your meters.

Network Monitoring

Monitoring pressure in the network, district meters, treatment plants etc has traditionally required an expensive SCADA solution. Outpost provides cost effective solutions for remote monitoring in difficult places with limited access to power.

Large Customer Demand Management

We’ve worked with utilities and their partners throughout Australia to deliver large customer demand management and engagement programs. In these programs water utilities will typically deploy the Outpost solution at large customer premises to provide them with web access to highly granular, time-of-use water consumption data and SMS/email alerts for leaks and exceptional consumption.

As well as engaging with their individual customers, utilities operating large customer demand programs can use our software to drill into individual industries and applications to establish benchmarks and engage with industry bodies, and to gain valuable insights into how their biggest customers use their services.

Demand management programs using the Outpost solution have proven effective in reducing water demand and empowering large water users to better manage water resource consumption. Here’s an example of how Water Corporation, whose operations span over 2.6 million square kilometres, use Outpost products to engage with their most important customers to manage demand.

AMI for hard to read meters

From one-off hard to read meters, to entire cities, the Outpost Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) solution is used to revolutionise the collection of data from water meter’s by utilities. Because our solution allows every meter (or sensor) to connect to the web without any dedicated radio network infrastructure, and independently of any other meters and therefore minimum meter densities, it can be used for individual “problem” meters (e.g. those with access issues such as being behind locked gates or guarded by dogs). At the same time, it’s economical enough to be suited to city-wide deployments involving thousands of meters, where the speed of deployment of deterministic cost provides project planners with peace of mind regarding AMI project deployment costs and timelines. Our web platform contains a raft of meter data functionality including meter read reporting, check read handling, data validation tools, spatial data representation etc

Wildeye partner Scott Brain (from Carnarvon-based agronomy services provider Field Capacity) has been working with Water Corporation Western Australia on soil moisture monitoring at the Rhodes grass pasture project. The project is using treated wastewater to grow Rhodes Grass, which is turned into hay and sold to local farmers. The funds raised through the sale of the hay are used to help fund community projects undertaken by not-for-profit groups and schools, including Broome Senior High School, which received $7,500 for an interschool science, technology, engineering and mathematics event; and Centacare Kimberley, which received $7,700 for 'Cooking up Good Tucker', a project aimed at teaching traditional Aboriginal food preparation.
Field Capacity
The quality of drinking water supplied to miners in the Pilbara region of Western Australia is being watched over by Outpost products. Rio Tinto use Outpost technology to monitor and alert for residual chlorine levels in water treatment plants throughout the Pilbara region.
Rio Tinto
Grain growers in WA’s wheatbelt region are benefiting from Department of Agriculture and Food Western Australia’s (DAFWA) network of online monitoring stations powered by Wildeye technology. These stations read a suite of weather sensors and sub-surface soil moisture probes to provide real-time info to Western Australia’s $2-$3 billion grain industry. The data is used to inform strategic planning decisions around planting programs and input investments, and operational decisions based on real-time spraying (delta-T) and harvest (Fire Danger Index) information.
DAFWA
Outpost’s UK partner RS Hydro is working with consortium Kier BAM and well-services contractor Stuart Group to monitor meters, environmental and geotechnical sensors throughout the $18 billion pound Hinkely Point C nuclear power station development in Somerset, England.
RS Hydro
Our galileo temperature monitoring product now monitors vaccine storage at ASX-listed Healthscope clinics throughout Australia, helping to reduce vaccine wastage and bringing cold-chain management into the 21st century.
Healthscope
Wine producers in the world-famous Barossa region of South Australia benefit from Outpost technology (and on occasion we like the benefit from their wines!). Barossa Infrastructure supply irrigation water to grape growers in the Barossa region, and use Outpost products to record data from meters and pressure sensors throughout the network.
Barossa Infrastructure
Rio Tinto relies on Outpost technology to monitor and manage diesel supply in the Pilbara where our products are used to provide their operators with detailed information and alerts regarding bulk diesel storage levels.
Rio Tinto
To further secure Perth’s water supply, Water Corporation announced in 2017 that they are providing another 200 of Perth’s largest water consumers with Outpost monitoring technology to help them manage their water use and ultimately reduce overall potable water demand.
Water Corporation
Christ Church Grammar School recently deployed Wildeye sensors into their brand new St John’s Wood sports fields to monitor weather and soil moisture. The soil moisture monitoring system is entirely buried within the playing fields with no visible sign of the system at all - amazing!
Christ Church Grammar School
Water Corporation use Outpost technology to engage with some of their most important customers, including more than 200 of Perth’s biggest water users.
Water Corporation

Network and Pressure Monitoring

Outpost enables users to connect their water (and other utility) distribution networks to the web. Our hardware connects pressure sensors, district meters, control structures, float switches and more to the web in minutes without the need for complex planning and siteworks, and at a low and deterministic cost. Our web console allows operators to perform on-the-fly analysis and visualisation of pressures and flows, generate user rerports and alerts, and check control structure status. The low cost and ease of deployment makes Outpost network monitoring solutions suitable for both long term deployments or temporary monitoring.

Residential end use studies

Researchers and water utilities undertake end use studies to gain insights into into demand patterns; which then informs planning decisions, development of demand management strategies, water efficiency program design and demand forecasting. Because of its ruggedness, compact form-factor, long battery life and ease of deployment, the WASP2 datalogger has become the tool of choice for residential end-use studies in Australia. We’ve worked with researchers and utilities across Australia to collect, process and present data collected from thousands of residential water meters. Like South East Queensland Water, who supply bulk water to retailers throughout southeast Queensland, and use the Outpost platform to collect and analyse residential end-use data that helps them plan a reliable and sustainable water supply for residents in southeast Queensland.

Sewer Overflow Monitoring

Heavy rain and other network issues can cause unplanned discharge from sewer and drainage networks. Utilities and service providers use the WASP2 to achieve visibility over their piped networks to better manage their performance and to prevent unplanned discharges and associated regulatory breaches. With a rugged, one-piece design incorporating float switch and wireless internet connectivity, and the ability to deploy sensors and level switches in minutes, it’s simpler than ever before to connect your drainage and sewer networks to the web.