Two Thousand Flowmeters in Fifteen Indian Cities Get a Platform

ABB launched AquaMaster+ in Bengaluru on 15 September, a cloud platform for smart water network management. It pairs with the company's AquaMaster4 electromagnetic flowmeters, which measure flow velocities as low as 0.1 m/s, but also runs standalone as software integrated into existing systems.

The installed base is the reason this is more than a product launch. Roughly 2,000 AquaMaster units already operate across 15 Indian cities in eight states, with Bengaluru alone accounting for 500, and others in Rajasthan, Odisha and New Delhi. Those meters have been producing data for years; most of it lands in spreadsheets.

At fleet level the platform offers GIS mapping and network overviews. At device level it tracks flow and pressure shifts, runs diagnostics and allows remote configuration. Real-time anomaly detection works by comparing parameters and logging events, which is how leaks and pressure transients get surfaced rather than discovered on a complaint call. The feature likely to be used hardest is the virtual flowmeter, which lets operators model and compare scenarios — and stand in for the district metered areas that never got a physical instrument.

Raghu Kumar NV, global product manager at ABB Measurement & Analytics, said the platform will connect water utilities to crucial flow measurement insights. ABB cites more than 50 years in the water industry, and described the AquaMaster4 Mobile Comms as the world's first bidirectional electromagnetic flowmeter in 2022.

Non-revenue water in Indian distribution networks runs into tens of percent. Building a network model on meters already in the ground is a much cheaper route to localising those losses than laying new instrumentation — and it is the sort of project that either works because the meter data is trustworthy, or exposes very quickly that it is not.