Wireless water tank monitoring equipment can be helpful, but is it affordable?
What Is Tank Telemetry?
Knowing the volume of freshwater (oil, wastewater, or any fluid) in a bulk tank is crucial to running a safe, efficient operation. Tank telemetry provides tank readings without entering or even being near a storage tank. In fact, remote tanks are often the vessels that most benefit from tank telemetry.
Using sophisticated (but affordable) equipment telemetry combing level readings with tank sensors to indicate volume, flow, and even the angle of the water level if a vessel is set on an angle (as many are.)
The sensors measure the fluid density, height, and other variables to indicate the volume of fluid in the tank. Many tank sensors transmit this data every few minutes.
Why Are Tank Monitors Important?
For municipalities, even fresh water levels can be very important to measure. Important decisions can be made easily and without access to the storage tank itself to manage the flow of water to residents.
Water treatment plants, however, must avoid costly spills that can contaminate groundwater and cause environmental issues. This is both a financial issue and a public health concern – both mitigated by monitors.
Oil & gas has a similar need. Crude oil and liquids in storage tanks possess a risk of overflowing which can cause a number of issues. More than any of the below financial and environmental concerns, operations are also shut down for an extended period of time while spills are reported, remediated, and the operator is again cleared to produce.
How Do Tank Monitors Save Money?
It’s no secret that spills are expensive. For valuable fluids like crude oil, liquid natural gas, and other expensive products, overflowing a tank means lost product. Lost product is expensive and hard to replace. Tank level monitoring systems reduce wasted and lost product.
More importantly, a spill of hazardous material is expensive to clean up. The obvious costs of lost product are easy to calculate, but satisfying regulatory requirements and government entities like the EPA can cancel out the profits of a site for months or even years depending on the spill. A simple monitoring solution can avoid both the lost product costs and those of environmental remediation.
Smart Water Tank Monitoring Systems
Using a combination of simple sensors and technology, smart water tank monitoring systems that combine automated tank level monitoring and pump-off controls like Reign’s POC allow management teams to prevent and eliminate spills altogether. These systems offer browser-supported access (allowing managers to make changes from anywhere in the world) and alerts that keep teams in the know.
Smart systems that use cellular technology have a lower cost basis and better rollout even in the most remote locations. Systems depend on good technology and equipment, but also excellent customer service, something Reign prides itself on.
