EPGL Requirements for SMS System

EPGL Summary

EPGL is a company based in Ahmedabad, India that installs and operates reverse-osmosis (RO) water treatment plants that can produce clean water at extremely low cost. The company currently operates 10 plants and has plans to launch ~250 new plants in the next 18 months.

EPGL’s reverse-osmosis systems depend on membranes that are expensive and fragile. The company must monitor these membranes carefully to avoid damage and loss of service quality. Several indicators, if reported regularly, can guide maintenance of the systems so that performance does not degrade.

Use case 1: Water plant operator

Located in a village in Gujarat, a RO plant operator will record several numbers at the end of a day’s operation and submit them via SMS:

  • Inlet pressure (measured in kg/cm^2) – 2 digits (e.g., 22)
  • Outlet pressure (measured in kg/cm^2) – 2 digits (e.g., 22)
  • Water TDS level (measured in ppm) – 3 digits (e.g., 231)
  • Volume of water output (measured in 1,000s of liters) – 3 digits (e.g., 16)
  • Volume of water sold (measured in 1,000s of liters) – 3 digits (e.g., 15)
  • Hours of operation – 2 digits (e.g., 19)
  • Product flow (measured in L / hour) – 4 digits (e.g., 873)
  • Units of electricity consumed (measured in “units”) – 2 digits (e.g., 15)
  • Cash collected (measured in Indian Rupees) – 3 digits (e.g., 978)
  • # pre-paid cards sold – 2 digits (e.g., 11)
  • Sand filter backwashed? (measured in Y or N) – 1 digit (e.g., Y)
  • Carbon filter backwashed? (measured in Y or N) – 1 digit (e.g., Y)
  • Micron filter backwashed? (measured in Y or N) – 1 digit (e.g., Y)

Use case 2: EPGL management & maintenance staff

EPGL’s maintenance staff and management team performs a daily review of this information for all facilities. They would want the ability to see 2 views of the data:

  • Daily snapshot of all above numbers for all facilities
  • Timeline view of all numbers for a single facility over time – this will allow maintenance staff to do basic trend analysis and identify plants that might be experiencing degraded performance

Without an SMS system, the maintenance staff would plan to visit each facility once every 2 weeks to monitor the plant health and do preventative maintenance. If the SMS system is in place, they can reduce the frequency of visitation to once per month or even less. The visits can be better targeted based on the health indicators.

Cost

Given EPGL’s model, it appears that there will be one submission of data per day per facility. Given the system that was previously built for GEWP, this should translate into 2-4 total SMS messages being sent per day per facility. EPGL had not budgeted for this operational expense, but it seems that the cost of 2-4 SMSs per day should be manageable. If all goes well, there will be significant savings on maintenance & travel costs.

At any rate, the company would be interested to see cost data for the GEWP prototype to confirm that it can afford the SMS fees.

Info