On day two of Northumbrian Water’s Innovation Festival, Louisa Buckley, Sales Manager, Secure Power Division at Schneider Electric, explores the challenges water utilities face as they become more reliant on resilient power, and why data and intelligent systems are key to the sectors digital transformation.
The water industry is acutely aware of the importance of power. According to OfWat, today an estimated 10% of all water company operating expenses (OpEx) are energy costs, and since 2000, the UK water industry’s average total expenditure (ToTex) has traditionally been around £10 billion a year. Additionally, average capital expenditure (CapEx) for critical assets such as buildings, equipment, and technology has been between £5bn and £6bn a year.
Any steps that can be taken to reduce costs, therefore, are good news, and many water companies want to ensure that the power for which they pay is being used as efficiently and economically as possible.
Most recently, the water industry has experienced significant increases in wholesale energy prices ,which has impacted both domestic households and businesses alike. In the two years to March 2023, for example, electricity prices increased by 27% on average per year above the rate of CPIH (Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs).
The industry regulator, Ofwat, is not unaware of this situation, and with water companies now under greater pressure to reduce their overheads and minimise cost increases, how they use the energy becomes vital.
The role of technology
Today’s water companies also bear responsibility for delivering safe and secure water to their domestic and business customers, while removing and treating wastewater and sewage with minimal environmental impact.
When one considers the thousands of miles of pipes, pumps, valves and instrumentation, the water treatment plants themselves, and their reliance on so many mechanical and electrical services, it is amazing that, with occasional planned and unplanned exceptions, this process works so well.
Even before the arrival of automation and, more recently, digital or smart water solutions, the water industry was heavily reliant on the provision of safe, reliable and resilient power to perform many of its functions. While gravity is a much cheaper resource than electricity, there are plenty of locations and situations which require energy to perform.
Pumping stations are an obvious example and perform the critical function of helping to deliver drinking water and wastewater exactly to where it is required. Here uninterruptible power protection is vital to ensure said stations can continue to operate in the face of an energy failure.
There are also plenty of other water industry systems and infrastructure plant which requires electricity to operate – UV treatment plants, chemical dosing and chlorination, membrane bioreactors, and ‘humble’ actuators, which open and close valves in pipelines, for example. For these critical systems automation, uptime and efficiency are essential, and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems were introduced several decades ago to provide a relatively basic level of control and data acquisition.
This level of digitalisation, coupled with fieldbus technology solutions, has enabled the water industry to obtain a significant level of automated operations, control and maintenance, including that of its clean and dirty water infrastructure. Without resilient power, however, these solutions would simply not function.
PLCs, remote terminal units (RTUS), sensors and variable speed drives (VSDs), for example, would stop working, and the consequences of such plant failure can include polluted and untreated wastewater reaching local rivers and seas, and a major impact on biodiversity. From the perspective of clean water, treatment failure can also have catastrophic consequences for anyone who encounters it or drinks it.
Digital transformation
For these reasons, the water industry has had to undergo significant modernisation and digital transformation in recent years, implementing both ‘digital water’ and ‘smart water’ solutions, which are dependent on highly connected micro data centre solutions and IoT sensors capable of sending and receiving real-time digital information. Here, the data captured provides a previously unrealisable level of network intelligence, on which both day-to-day and longer-term operational decisions will be based.
Through this granular level of automation and intelligence, plant performance, for example, can be measured, monitored and analysed at the component, sub-system, system and overall site level. Performance issues can be flagged in real time and remediated almost as quickly.
Longer term decisions as to when and where to maintain and/or upgrade infrastructure can also be taken from data derived across a water company’s area of operation, thereby allowing utilities companies to undertake preventative maintenance, and proactively reduce costs.
Water conservation and sustainability
Alongside the ‘basics’ of drinking water and wastewater services, today’s water utilities are also seeking to address the problem of water conservation and demand management. Climate change means that the UK’s weather is increasingly volatile and, therefore, water companies have begun to plan and model scenarios for these possible extremes.
For example, not only do they have to consider building new reservoirs to ensure water is available during hotter summers, but they are also exploring ways in which to control how we consume increasingly precious water resources. Smart meters, for example, are a key way of achieving this, alongside greater consumer education, and the former requires increased digitisation within homes and buildings.
Building the business case
At the start of this article, I referenced that the UK water industry spends some 10% of OpEx on power. Imagine if this figure could be reduced by, 10%, 20% or more? The financial savings build a strong business case alone, but an equally great contribution is the impact made on reducing the industry’s energy, resource consumption, and carbon emissions.
Furthermore, as the water industry places increasing pressure on consumers to reduce their own water-related environmental footprint, it must demonstrate its own success when it comes to sustainability. To achieve this, increased automation, digitalisation and electrification are vital.
At Schneider Electric, our mission is to be our customers partner for sustainability and efficiency, and we work with organisations across a host of sectors to help them reduce their energy and environmental impact. Today we have developed a complete portfolio of edge data centre, uninterruptible power and energy management solutions and services which are already helping utilities to make substantial financial, operational and emissions savings.
For the water industry specifically, our UPS and intelligent power monitoring systems provide the resilient architectures necessary to ensure the safe, reliable, and efficient operation of drinking water and wastewater treatment assets. Our industrial UPS systems and ruggedised micro data centre solutions, for example, are designed to cope with the harsh and remote conditions accompanying many water applications while ensuring high levels of uptime and efficiency.
Our EcoStruxure software platform also provides a comprehensive range of plant control, monitoring, management and analytics functions – delivering on the promise of digital transformation, while enabling water companies to achieve significant financial savings.
Closing thoughts
Looking forward, the water industry faces increasingly complex challenges as it seeks to meet and surpass the expectations of stakeholder groups including Government, financial and environmental regulators, investors, trade associations, campaign groups and consumers.
Clean, safe water must be delivered to households and businesses without compromise, and our rivers and seas must beome free from pollution. To achieve this, water companies must focus on increased digitisation and sustainability, something which can only be enabled through smart, intelligent and automated technologies, and ecosystem partners expert in sustainability.
