The Mexican utility Servicios de Agua y Drenaje de Monterrey I.P.D. (SADM) was the winner of the Innovation Water Circularity Award 2024, presented at WEX Global, an international event that promotes the exchange of knowledge and best practices among the world’s leading players in the water and energy sectors, which recently held its 19th meeting in Madrid (Spain).
This award-winning technology aims to optimise water supply, reducing water loss, digitally controlling pressures, flows and water consumption and improving decision-making in real time. In this case, two of the Xylem Vue powered by GoAigua platform’s digital solutions, Leak Detection and Unified Network Management, were implemented in the Mexican utility.
In partnership with the international water technology company Idrica, the Leak Detection solution was implemented to monitor pressure, flow rates and consumption in the network managed by SADM in Monterrey, as well as to regulate pressure. The Unified Network Management solution was installed to bring together information from the various dataloggers in place, as well as from its supervisory control and data acquisition system (SCADA).
The focus of this initiative was to fit hydrometric instrumentation to 2864 circuits and 111 macro-sectors, as well as to develop dashboards to display the main operating variables. As a second line of action, the Leak Detection solution was rolled out and configured with the deployment of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence algorithms to optimize pressure.
Water savings of up to 37 % in extreme drought conditions
The implementation of the platform has enabled SADM to monitor, analyse and make decisions on its water network operations in Monterrey, establishing and assigning daytime and night-time set points for its equipment, which enables it to control user consumption. In addition, it has identified possible anomalies in night-time water use that point to visible and hidden leaks.
As a result, considerable reductions have been obtained in the average consumption of some of its macro-sectors and circuits in the Monterrey water network. Although it is true that the overall saving is 17%, in many sectors the savings are as high as 34% to 37% after the actions taken. This is a milestone considering that Mexico is facing one of its worst droughts in recent years.
This project is part of SADM’s 2050 Water Supply Assurance Master Plan. Servicios de Agua y Drenaje de Monterrey currently provides potable water for 99.22% of the population, 96.07% have a sanitation system, and 99.99% a wastewater treatment system in a metropolitan area of 5.3 million inhabitants.
Digital transformation, the key to the future
Under the title, “Water, Energy and Climate Change: Integrated Solutions to Build a Water Positive Future”, WEX Global 2024 recently welcomed over 250 participants in Madrid, with the common goal of addressing the most pressing water and energy challenges in a scenario marked by climate change.
In the words of Mark Barker, CEO of WEX Global, “this year’s event consolidates WEX Global as one of the most important discussion forums in the water and energy sector, addressing crucial issues to improve resilience and sustainability against a background of severe climate stress”.
Pablo Calabuig, VP Americas at Idrica, underlined the impact of artificial intelligence as a major technology to bear in mind. The executive pointed out that ” this is the best time in history to commit to innovation, collaboration and global action so we can build a more resilient, sustainable and equitable future for the water sector”.
Jean de Montal, Xylem’s Solution Selling Europe S&W Director, agreed, highlighting the importance of cooperation as the basis for digital transformation. However, he also highlighted the need for “a holistic, long-term vision to embrace digital transformation, focused on breaking down information silos within utilities. This is why we need to generate a digital culture in companies”.
One of the technologies most frequently mentioned during WEX Global was artificial intelligence. Pilar Conejos, Idrica’s Digital Twin Manager, emphasized that this technology “is set to transform the water and energy sector”. Similarly, Chema Nebot, VP EMEA – APAC – Brazil at Idrica, indicated that “utilities are keen to adopt technology, although public-private partnerships will be required to push this forward”.
