Smart Water Management for Remote Communities

The Company

iFert develops innovative telemetry systems that optimize decision making and generate great impact in water distribution in remote areas.

The solution developed by the company for drinking water affects production, distribution and storage, achieving significant advances in the availability of the resource in rural areas. It also has a positive impact in the efficiency and profitability of companies in potable water by providing solutions that adapt to specific needs, managing to take control of equipment and generating high-value information for decision-making.

The Challenge

iFert needed to develop a robust, trustworthy control system to implement in their projects, one that would enable easy data access. Data reports are a key aspect of their projects; these reports must contain relevant, reliable data and must arrive at the correct intervals. Correctly executed, these reports can then be confidently used by decision-makers regarding potable water supply,

The control system had to be cost-effective and easy to program, and had to provide advanced communication capabilities. In the Water Supply Industry for remote and rural areas, reliable communication with peripheral equipment and easy to use data visualization is a major challenge. For this reason, iFert developed a patented SCADA system for remote monitoring and support. To communicate data to their SCADA, they needed PLC controllers that could support MQTT natively.

Solution and Implementation

iFert selected UniStream PLC controllers from Unitronics for system control and communications, and UniStream panels, connected via Ethernet, to provide the HMI interface.

By communicating via RS485 and being supplied with instrumentation feedback at different points in the hydraulic network, the UniStream PLCs control the pumps and keep water available for the community.

The HMI application displays data and allows operators to adjust pump function in real time in an easy and intuitive way, either on site or via remote access.

Through UniLogic, the iFert team was able both to easily configure UniStream's integrated alarm system to notify technicians of system status and to configure MQTT communications to automatically update their proprietary SCADA system.

In a successful use case located in the dry region of central Chile, the finished system manages and coordinates the supply of water in a mountainous rural area with difficult access, which includes more than 35 points of production, collection, storage and distribution of a drinking water network.

With UniStream controllers, the iFert solution allows centralized management of water acquisition for the preparation of drinking water, ensuring continuity of water supply and centralizing all information for better control for hundreds of users.

Benjamín Ramos, CTO and co-founder of IFert, Automation Engineer with extensive experience in the design, development and implementation of IoT and telemetry solutions for the efficient management of drinking water, was very satisfied with the high quality of Unitronics products and the level of support from the local distributor i40 Networks.

"The strength of the UniStream PLC and UniLogic software, coupled with the fast delivery from Unitronics and the excellent local support from i40 Networks, allowed us to meet the requirements and deliver this project on time."