Smart Pipes: The Future for Proactive Asset Management

Several thousands of kilometers of pipes and cables are buried beneath streets. Because they are not visible and easily accessible, the monitoring of their integrity and quality of their contents is a challenge. Any information on these properties aids the utility owners to plan and manage their maintenance regime. Traditionally, expensive and very localized sensors have been used to provide irregular measurements of these properties. In order to have a complete picture of the utility network, cheaper sensors need to be investigated, which would allow large numbers of small sensors to be incorporated into (or near to) the pipe leading to so-called smart pipes. Assuming the lifetime of the sensors is of the same order as the buried asset itself, it will not be possible to power these sensors using traditional power sources. This paper focuses on the different options available to power the sensors (non-regenerative and generative) and introduces ideas for the communication between these sensors and power management systems.