Battery Life & Internet of Things

Smart City devices are providing us with invaluable data and enhancing the ways we operate and maintain our aging water infrastructure. With today’s technology, you can get virtually whatever data you want or need.  However, one must recognize the many factors that consume the battery life of these smart devices. 

Battery life arguably is one of the more critical components to consider when deploying large scale smart city devices. Using an iPhone as an example, if you must charge your phone multiple times a day, each minute lost recharging the battery decreases user engagement by a considerable amount as they become more focused on ways to extend battery life. Similarly, if you must replace batteries on say a water meter after only five years you would be less likely to embrace the many benefits that advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) brings as you are now concerned about scheduling appointments with your 25,000 water customers for battery replacements.

Two of the biggest things that affect battery life on a smart sensor are software running in the background and communications. Software is easy to address by placing the device into low power mode (or hibernating mode) when not in use.  Communications on the other hand are a bit more difficult to address due to distances and duration of data transmission between the smart device and head-end server.  Using water meters as an example, if the frequency used to communicate is unprotected it will likely be very congested and will take longer to communicate between the meter and the server due to frequency congestion (think public wifi). Range or distance is another factor that will adversely affect battery life. If the communications network must rely on inter-communications between smart devices to transmit data, the increase in communications from relaying data between smart devices back to the server will significantly shorten battery life. 

Some municipalities/water utilities have learned the hard way, and the additional labor cost associated with monitoring and replacing batteries has eclipsed the many benefits that an AMI system brings. The bottom line is batteries have a finite lifespan. Make sure you have a firm understanding about your smart device’s battery life.  Ask your manufacturer for a warranty on both the sensor and the battery to ensure your infrastructure keeps going and going and going.

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