Engineers at Servicios de Agua y Drenaje de Monterrey (SADM) in Monterrey, Mexico were presented with a challenge as they worked to provide potable water for the more than 3 million residents of the Monterrey metropolitan area. The area of Monterrey is located in a mountainous region of Mexico and the majority of the water comes from a natural park named La Huasteca.

A total of 20 wells are located in this area and supply more than 40 thousand gallons of water per minute to the surrounding region. Whenever problems arose in the wells, it required sending someone out into the rocky terrain to investigate each of the well pumping stations in order to determine where and what the problem was and then make the necessary repairs.

Like many municipal water systems around the globe, SADM began improving their water systems by adding PLCs to collect information from flow meters, energy meters and emergency plant controllers. While this helped to more quickly diagnose problems at each pumping station there were limitations on how the data could be relayed back to the central office because of the remote locations of the wells in non-populated areas.

Now, by using MaxStream's 9XTend wireless modems, SADM is able to remotely connect to each pumping station to monitor meter readings and equipment status. This real-time monitoring solution now provides for SADM to stations spread across a large area has dramatically cut back on maintenance costs. Ranges of several miles between data points are easily established by means of the one Watt of output power and the outstanding receiver sensitivity. SADM is currently working to add more remote monitoring and control of their infrastructure by using the 9XTend, including critical safety measurements at a nearby dam.