Strengthening remote irrigation monitoring in Tasmania

Reliable remote monitoring is essential across large-scale irrigation networks. For Tasmania’s Don Irrigation Scheme, Cromarty worked with Ovarro to deploy TBox remote telemetry units, providing dependable flow and pressure monitoring across remote property outlets connected to the central SCADA system.

Reliable remote monitoring

In large-scale irrigation networks, reliable remote monitoring is essential to help operators manage water distribution across geographically dispersed and often challenging locations. To support the Don Irrigation Scheme in Tasmania, Cromarty, an Australian automation and electrical engineering specialist, worked with Ovarro, a specialist in remote telemetry systems. Together, they delivered a solution for remote outlet installations that required dependable flow and pressure monitoring as part of Tasmanian Irrigation’s SCADA system.

Cromarty has been solving industrial automation, measurement and control challenges for more than 35 years. With engineering expertise across complex operational environments, the company supports critical infrastructure projects where reliability, integration and long-term serviceability are essential. For irrigation schemes, this means helping connect remote field assets to the systems that operators use to monitor performance, monitor water delivery and respond to issues in the field.

River flowing through a forested landscape in Tasmania.

Water

Monitoring and control

RTUs

Engineer in a high-visibility vest recording information during a field inspection.

Reliable access to water for irrigation

The Don Irrigation Scheme is a major regional infrastructure project for north-west Tasmania, supplying high-reliability irrigation water to the Don, Forth, Barrington and Sheffield districts. The scheme delivers 4,750 megalitres of summer water and 4,750 megalitres of winter water, supporting irrigators across a 180-day summer season and a 180-day winter delivery period.

Drawing water from the Forth River catchment, the scheme uses three pump stations, balance tanks and 53 kilometres of distribution pipeline to deliver water to irrigators at a peak flow rate of 39.6 megalitres per day. This scale makes reliable monitoring essential, helping operators manage flow and pressure across remote outlet installations while maintaining dependable water delivery throughout the irrigation season.

By providing reliable access to water for irrigation, the project helps local agricultural businesses diversify, expand and increase crop rotations, making reliable telemetry a key part of the scheme’s long-term operation.

For local producers, dependable irrigation can influence planning decisions, crop choices and investment confidence. This made the supporting monitoring infrastructure particularly important, because the value of the scheme depends not only on delivering water.

A reliable, low-powered telemetry approach

For Cromarty, the project required a solution that could perform consistently across remote property outlet installations. Many of these sites are located away from mains power and fixed communications infrastructure, meaning the telemetry system needed to combine low power consumption, reliable cellular communications and robust field performance. The project therefore required more than a standard monitoring device. It needed a proven remote telemetry platform capable of supporting dependable data acquisition across a distributed irrigation network.

The scheme required a reliable, low-powered and solar-charged telemetry approach capable of communicating over cellular networks. Previous alternative telemetry technology had been trialled, but was found to be insufficiently robust for the remote signal strengths across the scheme. To address this, Cromarty worked with Ovarro to deploy a telemetry solution based around Ovarro’s TBox remote telemetry units (RTUs).

This made resilience a central requirement from the outset. The selected technology needed to handle the realities of remote communications, limited power availability and changing field conditions, while continuing to provide data to Tasmanian Irrigation’s central SCADA system.

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The TBox is well suited to remote site applications like this one. It is proven on our network, integrates cleanly with our SCADA and performs reliably in the conditions we deploy it into.

Michael Holmes

Manager Engineering and Asset Intelligence at Tasmanian Irrigation.

Results

Ovarro’s TBox RTUs were selected for the Don Irrigation Scheme for their compact, all-in-one design, environmental resilience, communication capabilities and compatibility with the existing SCADA system. The units collect pressure and flow data from remote property outlets, giving Tasmanian Irrigation greater visibility of farmers’ water allocation usage without remotely controlling the sites. “The devices have to be robust, practical for repeat deployment and have the communications capability and protocols required for this type of infrastructure,” said Paul Stute, Product Sales Manager for RTUs at Ovarro.

Cromarty worked closely with Ovarro during integration, with technical support helping to resolve early communications challenges, including VPN configuration and IP address allocation. Cromarty also developed and tested code off site, creating a template that could be refined before being rolled out across multiple installations. This repeatable approach helped support reliable deployment across remote assets while reducing reliance on manual checks and site visits.

Since deployment, the telemetry system has operated reliably with minimal issues, providing consistent data from remote field assets. “Ovarro’s support helped resolve the early integration challenges and gave us confidence in the suitability of the solution before deployment,” said Eric Goh, Automation Engineer at Cromarty. The project has also established a scalable approach for future schemes, with Cromarty subsequently awarded further work involving TBox RTUs for the Northern Midlands Irrigation Scheme.

Ovarro TBox LT2 remote telemetry unit with antenna and communication ports.

Key deliverables

Reliable remote flow and pressure monitoring
Low-power cellular telemetry across remote sites

Seamless integration with the existing SCADA system
Scalable TBox RTU deployment for future irrigation schemes

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Strengthening remote irrigation monitoring in Tasmania