Project start: 2020/2021

Partner: Water Mission

Countries: Uganda, Tanzania

The aim is to provide families with drinking water in their homes in villages. A public water supply is not available. Management is to take place in the villages on their own responsibility. The running costs of the water infrastructure are to be covered by the income from water sales.

For this purpose, a water supply infrastructure is achieved that is equipped with low-cost, non-networked prepaid water meters in the houses.

Nevertheless, the management process is to be automated as far as possible to be completely controlled by the villagers without additional support. For this purpose, inexpensive and straightforward STS prepaid water meters with PIN-pad are used.

STS(Standard Transfer Specification) is an international, manufacturer-independent standard for prepaid electricity and water meters that work with credit tokens. A 16-digit token is entered at the meter, which then releases a corresponding amount of water or electricity.

To implement a process that is as simple as possible and tamper-proof, the water sale process is to be realized by mobile payment procedure. The revenues shut be collected in a shared management account.

For this purpose, the iSAtech Prepaid Metering System was set up as a central payment and management system:

  1. The consumer is registered in the system with his water meter by a contact person in the village.
  2. The consumer sends a mobile payment to the shared account.
  3. The iSAtech Prepaid Metering System records the payment and allocates it to the consumer.
  4. The iSAtech Prepaid Metering System generates a credit token for the consumer's meter.
  5. The iSAtech Prepaid Metering System sends the consumer an SMS with the token.
  6. The consumer enters the token on the PIN pad of his meter and receives water according to his payment.

The system is kept so simple for the villagers that it can be used without major instruction or training. The statistical evaluations and the consideration of water production quantities allow a quick overview of possible water losses.

Project key points:

  • Project for water distribution with cost-effective STS domestic water meters.
  • Automatic recording of payments by means of evaluation of instant payment notification SMS.
    No complex and costly system integration with the payment provider is necessary.
  • Automatic generation of verified STS credit tokens.
    All STS-compliant electricity and water meters can be used.
  • Automatic sending of tokens via SMS.
  • Easy management of the system using a smartphone in the village.
  • Connection to the water infrastructure for recording the pumped water quantities.
  • Embedding in the IT infrastructure of the project partner for the evaluation and identification of water losses.