The installation of 3,000 smart electricity meters on agricultural wells in Tehran Province has helped curb annual water consumption by 35 million cubic meters, the provincial water company’s deputy for operations said.
“There are about 13,500 legal wells in the province, which extract close to 2 billion cubic meters of water from depleting ground resources, accounting for 80% of total withdrawal in the region,” Mehr News Agency also quoted Ahmad Ali Qorbanian as saying.
“The wells were equipped with smart meters between 2014 and 2019 and an additional 1,000 meters will be installed by March 2022,” he said.
“Equipping wells with the new system will help utility companies closely monitor water use online and prevent excessive withdrawal from authorized wells in the farming sector.”
Smart wells are advanced structures with sensors and valves installed downhole to allow easy and systematic monitoring.
Injudicious use and waste of groundwater from legal and illegal wells have emerged as a major problem in Iran's struggle against the water crisis that has gotten worse over the past half century as precipitation declines and consumption rises.
According to the official, government-affiliated Power Generation, Distribution and Transmission Company installed 307,000 smart electricity meters at farms in 2018 in the first phase of the National Smart Metering Program (known as Fahm in Persian).
Nonetheless, with the rise in the price of steel and equipment used in manufacturing smart meters, the average price of each meter increased to 200 million rials ($1,000), which slowed down installations in 2020.
“The current price of a smart meter is now more than double the price in 2019 and this has discouraged farmers to equip their wells.”
Thanks to the new gadgets, consumers are informed about daily use and adjust consumption. Utilities in many developed and developing countries are promoting such meters for economic and environmental reasons, especially to reduce cost and consumption.
Renewable Resources
Renewable water resources show an appalling 20% decline in the past five years, down from 130 billion cubic meters in 2013 to 105 billion cubic meters at present.
Renewable resources were close to 140 bcm in 1999, which started to rapidly decline ever since. It fell to 135 bcm, 130 bcm and 105 bcm in 2007, 2013 and 2017 respectively.
Iran's annual water consumption exceeds 100 bcm, which is not acceptable by both regional and international norms, meaning people should be more conscious about the value and role of the precious resource.
Thousands of illegal wells used by farmers for agriculture have been identified and closed across Iran in the past few years. Restrictions on the use of surface and groundwater resources have also been imposed by the government to help preserve the precious but rapidly dwindling resource.
The steep decline in groundwater levels is having devastating consequences. Excessive pumping is harming groundwater tables and stopping wells from reaching the groundwater. When groundwater is overused, lakes, streams and rivers connected to groundwater also start diminishing and vanish as time passes.
