ESSBIO is a private sector water utility, today controlled by the Canadian “Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan” (OTPP), which serves 808,500 clients within the regions of O’Higgins and Bio Bio in Chile. It is the second largest water utility in Chile, and the largest outside Santiago. Direct employees in ESSBIO number over 1,000. ESSBIO produces and distributes drinking water, recollects, treats, and disposes sewage water. It also treats liquid industrial residues, and provides technical assistance to rural potable water systems within both regions. At the end of 2017, ESSBIO covered 99,99 % of its inhabitants in drinking water, 92,7 % in sewage, all of which is now subject to treatment before disposal.
ESSBIO is now engaged in a plan to improve its operational efficiency to diminish non-revenue water of its networks, to improve the quality of information provided to its clients, and to insure future water availability. This plan includes implementing pilot projects with smart metering technologies, automatic meter reading, and telecommunication networks, both mobile and fixed.
This video shows the pilot experience which started to operate in January, 2018 in the small town of Ñipas, where ESSBIO provides full services to almost 900 customers. This is the first locality in Chile operating water meters with a fixed communication base and a dedicated radio communication spectrum. The selected technology was Sensus FlexNet™ which, in a very short operational time, delivered impressive results as to the reliability of the communication system and the data quality and quantity it provided to be analyzed.