Project Description

Jämtkraft avoided enormous repair costs

”Thanks to Wideco’s sensors we discovered the leak right away and could shut it down in order to avoid flooding. It would have been extremely costly to repair and restore plants and constructions in the vicinity of the leak. We also avoided damaging the third party.”
Mikael Lindvall, operations manager, Jämtkraft

In the beginning of 2008 Jämtkraft issued a tendering of delivery, installation and alarm monitoring of district heating pipes and district heating chambers in Östersund, Sweden. The tendering also entailed the company’s minor network in the mountains of Jämtland. Up and till this the company had carried out manual controls of the systems, which was time consuming as well as potentially devastating since potential leaks were discovered at such a late stage. The purpose of the investment was to gain a better and a more efficient control of the pipelines.

Wideco obtained the tendering and delivered a total of 500 units that monitor the status of district heating pipelines all hours of the day as well as possible leaks and flooding in district heating chambers. The technology included 2G/3G-communication up to Wideco’s hosting environment. In the chamber there are A1-units with two floats (to control two water levels) and one temperature sensor.

High operational reliability
The challenge for this type of project is the operational reliability, ie an alarm must get through, and many of the installation sites are underground with poor air. Cold winter conditions also entail a challenge for installation sites above ground. Wideco has a high operational reliability and redundancy in several stages. This ensures high operational reliability and that an alarm will trigger at a potential malfunction.

Leakage 2009
Soon after the installation of the Wideco system for monitoring and detection, a leakage occurred in a concrete culvert in Östersund. Thanks to the Wideco sensors the leakage was detected immediately and the employees at Jämtkraft could swiftly rectify the problem and prevent potentially enormous damages.

”We received a level sensor alarm from one of the A1-units. We went there and found a chamber filled with water, all we could do was to turn it off and start pumping. It took us about 24 hours, but we could save the plant and we avoided potentially very large reparation costs. The system worked precisely as it should”, says Mikael Lindvall, operations manager at Jämtkraft. 

The future
Jämtkraft has decided, starting 2022, to replace Östersund’s all 500 units with Wideco’s 4G-units. Besides that, the company will shortly transfer to Wideco’s IoT-platform: WISION for visualization and control of the network and all units. Integration with superior systems will also begin as well as connection of new IoT-sensors to further strengthen the security against harmful leaks, for example surveillance of the central heating of the municipality. If there is a leakage, an alarm will trigger instantaneously, and a measure can be made proactively, and the end client will be helped directly, even if the client is not on the premises. Other applications that are being evaluated are opening controls of doors and cabinets with simple IoT-sensors, all connected to WISION and internal systems.