The foreign engineer has desgined a 'smart' meter that will allow households to track their water consumption remotely.
A Vietnamese-Canadian man recently invented smart water meters to help Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s biggest economic hub, battle acute water losses, Thanh Nien Newspaper reported.
Ho Chi Minh City loses about 565,000 cubic meters of water each year (equivalent to $135,000 per day and $49 million per year) according to the city’s largest water supplier SAWACO.
The city hopes to tackle the problem with a new "smart" meter designed by Vietnamese-Canadian Nguyen Thanh My of the Mylan Group, a foreign-owned chemical company in the southern province of Tra Vinh.
My’s products allow consumers to monitor data about water consumption from their smart phones.
“When water consumption unexpectedly rises, an alarm will notify users so that they can check their pipelines or lock their meter remotely," My said before adding that he has already conducted successful trials in homes in Vung Tau and Tra Vinh provinces.
My is working with SAWACO to select 20 homes to participate in a trial run in Ho Chi Minh City.
“Apart from $135,000 per day, water suppliers can now save about 25 percent of their annual revenues by checking household consumption in each family, printing bills and collecting fees online,” said My.