Meteor Invests In Major New Water Quality Centre

Meteor Communications, the remote environmental monitoring specialist, has invested in a new water quality service centre that is 250% larger than the company’s previous facility. “This expansion reflects the rapidly growing demand for remote river and final effluent monitoring systems, and in particular the continuous water quality monitoring requirements of the Environment Act 2021, Section 82,” explains Managing Director, Matt Dibbs.

Meteor provides a maintenance and calibration service for many of its customers, either as a service contract or as part of its ‘Water Quality as a Service’ offering. “This means that we have staff operating all over the UK, managing hundreds of multiparameter water quality sondes that mostly have to be swapped for recalibration on a monthly basis,” Matt explains. “We have therefore developed a highly efficient process in which large numbers of sondes can be cleaned, serviced and calibrated as quickly and as effectively as possible. However, such has been the demand for these services that we have invested in this new, much larger facility at Andromeda House in Aldermaston.

The company’s remote water quality monitors, known as ESNETs, were initially developed to meet the requirements of the Environment Agency for continuous river water quality monitoring. However, in recent years ESNETs have become popular with a much wider group of organisations, all of which are seeking to enhance the protection of UK rivers.

Looking forward, the demand for ESNET systems is set to grow further: in compliance with the Environment Act 2021; to provide monitoring data for the baseline, construction and operation phases of development, and as water and sewerage undertakers find new ways to exploit the benefits of real-time multiparameter water quality data - in final effluent for example.

Summarising the investment justification for Andromeda House, Matt says: “Accurate continuous water quality data is extremely important for many different stakeholders including regulators, water companies, farmers, consultants, engineers, researchers and members of the public such as wild water swimmers, anglers and paddle boarders. However, reliable measurements can only be achieved if the monitors are maintained and calibrated correctly, so Meteor is making the necessary investments in staff, training, equipment, vehicles and a highly efficient calibration and service laboratory. The development of the new Aldermaston facility means that we will be able to meet the demand for remote water quality monitoring for many years to come.”

For over 25 years, Meteor Communications has designed, built and installed remote environmental monitoring systems for global governmental, utility, industrial, consulting and academic organisations and the infrastructure sector. Innovation underpins the success of the company, and all products and solutions have been developed in close cooperation with customers.

Meteor’s products provide real-time access to vitally important field data, with three main themes. Remote water quality monitoring stations measure background levels, enabling trend analysis and the identification of pollution from diffuse and point sources. Remote, low-power, rugged cameras provide visualisation of key assets such as construction sites, flood gates, weirs, flumes, screens, grills etc. Both the cameras and the water quality monitoring stations provide immediate access to current conditions with alarm capability, which enables prompt remedial action, as well as the optimisation of maintenance activities. Advanced data storage, processing and analysis driven by AI.

Meteor Communications provides a wide range of off-the-shelf and bespoke monitoring solutions. Most can be deployed within minutes, are solar powered and do not require significant infrastructure to run. Cloud-based data is accessed via secure login to the MeteorCloud platform. This is achieved using any web-enabled device and provides instant access to live and stored data, which includes an interactive graphical display.

Meteor Communications has a large installed base of remote monitoring stations and the company’s turnover has increased 5-fold in the last 6 years.