Now pay for every drop of water in Chennai

By C Shivakumar & Sv Krishna Chaitanya  |  Express News Service  |   Published: 19th September 2017 11:43 PM  |  

CHENNAI: Residents in T Nagar will soon have to pay for the amount of water they use rather than the usual flat rate being charged by the Chennai Metro Water. Under the pilot project being introduced in

T Nagar, residents will now have to pay as per the readings of net meters which will soon be installed in the households dotting T Nagar.

“We are also planning to replicate it across the city,” sources said. Besides, the technology that is being used by the State will be much more advanced compared to the ones tried by Delhi and Mumbai. This will be completely hassle-free with zero human intervention.

“Our net meters will be different from the ones introduced in Delhi and Mumbai. Though the concept is same, Chennai Metro Water will be using Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) metering that feeds data directly into gateways, then to cloud and to the system. While, Delhi and Mumbai uses AMR which required manual intervention, where a person using a handheld device with a radio frequency gathers the information and feed into the system.

We preferred to go for AMR without human intervention to show that the State is more advanced in the country when compared  with other States,” an official said. Meanwhile, Chennai Metro Water is awaiting funds from the Centre to implement the scheme.

This will be carried out under Area Based Development (ABD) as part of smart city initiative. T Nagar will be provided with 24x7 water supply. The water metering will be an automated one offering accurate metering and leakage prevention (detection and control). Usually, water consumption is never measured and residents are charged a fixed flat rate. This makes people insensitive towards water conservation, say experts.

Interestingly, eight years ago, the Chennai Metro Water had made a failed attempt to introduce water metering system in the city.

Fact File

Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) will be introduced in T Nagar as a pilot project for the first time in the the State.

AMR will be free from human intervention unlike the ones being used in Delhi and Mumbai.