WET News

wwtonline.co.uk | FEBRUARY 2019 WET NEWS 7 NEWS+ Transient detection helping Scottish Water prevent bursts • Utility predicts £4.1 million saving on operational costs by 2021 S cottish Water says it has pre- vented 2,000 bursts from hap- pening in 2018 – saving £2 million – through its work detect- ing and responding to transients. Scottish Water said it is the first water utility in the UK to use inno- vative technology to predict the location and timing of where a burst will happen. It does this by looking at the cause and effect of previous bursts, as well as previous customer contact in relation to bursts, and works out where future incidents might occur. The water company has been using the technology since 2013 and since then there has been a 35 per cent reduction in customer contact as fewer people are ring- ing about bursts and their associ- ated impact, including water loss and low pressure. It has also delivered an energy saving of more than £40,000. It is estimated the technology will have saved the utility £4.1 mil- lion on operational costs by 2021. Scott Young, leakage delivery team leader at Scottish Water, has been working on the project for five years. He was part of a three- strong team that assessed histori- cal data of more than 60,000 his- toric bursts in the drinking water network to work out where they were most frequent and why. They discovered how transients – a short-lived pressure wave – in the water network can cause increased pipework bursts. Tran- sients are caused by normal variation in water demand patterns – sudden 'shocks' to the network, such as a pump starting or stop- ping, can cause them. Before the project began, Scottish Water, and the water industry in general, had little understanding of them. Young – along with Scottish Water technical support adviser Bob Wood and leakage delivery manager Allan Davie – started by investigating repeat bursts around pumping stations. In order to understand transients better, they had to be able to monitor them. The data loggers – devices con- nected to water meters to track the amount of water use on a con- stant basis – that are used by Scottish Water display data as a £1,400 a time, that is a £2 million saving. It also means less disruption to the network which means a better service for the utility's customers. Young said: "This knowledge puts us at the leading edge of the water industry. We have already started sharing our findings across the UK, with others looking to replicate what Scottish Water is doing. It could also affect how we could approach things like investment in the future. In the past, with frequently occurring bursts, we might have replaced the pipes. But if we're not shocking the network, they won't be under the same pressure and may not even need to be replaced." Big leakage targets rely on innovation - Oat O fwat has indicated that it will consider more ambi- tious leakage targets for future price reviews but said further improvements will be dependent on advances in tech- nology as well as greater levels of industry collaboration. In the House of Commons Envi- ronment, Food and Rural Affairs (Efra) select committee's report on the regulation of the water industry, it was argued that the 15 per cent leakage target for PR19 was "not ambitious enough" and that, while the industry has com- mitted to ensuring a 50 per cent reduction by 2050, it should seek to do so by 2040. In its response, Ofwat said it welcomed the focus on leakage and that it is working to ensure that all water companies face a "genuinely stretching perfor- mance commitment on leakage" in AMP7. However, the regulator also highlighted the fact that its 15 per cent target "represents an improvement on the most ambi- tious company's leakage performance commitment in PR14" and suggested utilities may be limited by the standard of the tools available to them. "At future price reviews, we intend to continue to review the leakage challenge we set compa- nies to ensure that targets stay in line with advances in technology and the best avail- able evidence on driving leakage reduction," the regulator said. It added: "A significant increase in industry collaboration and innovation is likely to be neces- sary to achieve continued improvements in leakage perfor- mance. As part of our review of our regulatory strategy, we will consider the appropriate role for Ofwat in relation to collaboration and innovation." Ofwat also expressed disap- pointment in the lack of pro- gress on water transfers in its response to the report, saying there are "economic, environ- mental and a resilience bene- fits to be achieved from plan- ning more effectively across company borders". CONTRACT WINS Thames Water has awarded Enviromontel Ltd, Enviro- mental Monitoring Solutions Ltd and Suez Advanced Solutions UK Ltd framework contracts for the provision of flow and load sampling services for Major Project schemes British firm Bluewater Bio has been awarded a contract to carry out a £28.6 million upgrade for a wastewater treatment plant in Bahrain. A £27.9 million loan has been provided by UK Export Finance (UKEF) to Bahrain's Ministry of Works under its direct lending facility Bristol Water has renewed its annual supply contract with Rezatec to provide agricultural land mapping and soil erosion risk modelling data products for the utility's water catch- ment management A ban on the outdoor use of metaldehyde is to be introduced across Great Britain from spring 2020, the Government has announced. Metaldehyde, a chemical used in the majority of slug pellets, poses dangers to wildlife and can also contaminate drinking water sources Northumbrian Water has been fined £499,725 after pleading guilty to the supply of water unfit for human consumption. The event followed maintenance work on the reservoir that required the internal application and curing of an epoxy coating material. The curing period did not match the requirements in the instructions and, when the reservoir was returned to supply, caused taste and odour issues for consumers Good month Bad month Late name change keeps Southern Water tunnelling project on track A specialist boring machine has been put to work on the Isle of Wight to tunnel 22 metres below the surface as part of a £4 million scheme to improve bathing water quality. At a ceremony to mark the start of tunnelling, Councillor Sara Sheath maintained tradition by renaming the machine 'Marthur'. It was originally called Arthur, but superstitions say that each machine must have a woman's name. "I haven't been asked to launch a ship yet but I was delighted to help out here," Councillor Sheath said. "Southern Water have found an innovative engineering solu- tion so that these important works will cause the minimum of disruption to traffic, residents and town life. I wish 'Marthur' and the project every success." Since last September, MGjv – a joint venture between Morrison Utility Services and Galliford Try – has been working to replace and redirect sewers in Shanklin with a view to improving the resil- ience and capacity of the sewerage network at times of heavy storms. The 12m long machine has been lowered into a specially built sha¦. The teeth of the 32-tonne 'mole' has been cutting a 1.8m wide tunnel through the rock at a rate of 7.5m per day while being checked every 300mm for accuracy. Acting as a tank, the tunnel has a lifespan of around 120 years and will be some 300m in length. It will boost stormwater storage capacity by 750,000 litres, which will result in a 30 to 40 per cent reduction in diluted discharges into the sea and help protect homes from flooding. An existing cast-iron sewer will continue to be included in the network but no longer has sufficient capacity on its own. The contract will be completed by 1 May in time for the bathing season. Shanklin's bathing water currently has a 'good' rating under the Blue Flag scheme but the tunnel work carried out under Southern Water's Bathing Water Enhancement Programme should raise it to 'excellent'. the network – the slower start-up no longer caused transients. This was key to the findings." The team then created a model using historical data to predict the number of bursts normally expected to happen within a 5km radius of pumping stations. This was based on the age of the pipe and its diameter and the material it was made from. They could then compare the number of expected bursts at the site with the actual number of bursts. This technology is being run at 110 sites across Scotland with an average 81 per cent reduction in bursts in each 5km radius. To date this has prevented 2,500 expected bursts; with each burst costing Scottish Water about "We have already started sharing our findings across the UK, with others looking to replicate what Scottish Water is doing. It could also affect how we could approach things like investment in the future" Leakage delivery team leader Scott Young 15-minute average. This meant transients could slip past unde- tected. As part of this project, the team developed high-speed log- gers that could process samples at a rate of 120 per second. Young said: "This work was critical, as it led us to a real understanding of how the net- work operates. We can see where transients occur, how they travel through the network, what speed they travel at. Information from the loggers allowed us to see what happened in the network when we tried starting pumps using a variable speed drive, compared to a regular start. "We slowed the start-up down to two to three minutes and dis- covered the pump did not shock

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