Utility Week

36 | JULY 2021 | UTILITY WEEK and you can run a simulation within a cou- ple of minutes." The presentation by Jeremy Heath, inno- vation manager at Sutton and East Surrey Water, also emphasised that smart networks give insight far beyond leak detection, such as opening up opportunities to analyse tran- sit time, pressure and pressure transients. "If we measure the temperature coming into a DMA, then measure the temperature further out in the DMA, we start to get an understanding of how that water was heated up and cooled down over that small area. That gives us a surrogate for transit time, and we can start to understand how the water is moving through the network." "Pressure control is another one. Instead of controlling to a single point, some com- panies are managing the pressure all the way across the area at variable points during the day. And also [they're] starting to meas- ure those sharp pressure transients coming through the network and understanding where they're originated from and getting rid of them." Elena Bricca, utilities smart infrastructure product line manager at water instrumenta- tion company Terranova, also talked about the need to take a wider-angled view of what can be achieved via smart networks – and to think in terms of linking water data networks to a "common data environment" shared by internal teams, external contractors and even other utilities. "We have to change our vision about digitalisation and start considering it as an enabling factor in the transformation of our business model. It means moving from investing in operational technology systems to work on a wider digital environment – continued from previous page including a smart network, but also smart metering, smart workforce and smart GIS systems, and so on." Picking the right protocol But once committed to a digitalisation strat- egy, water companies have to decide on the data communications protocol to adopt, selecting the most resilient platform with the best interoperability – in an immature market. In Australia, South East Water decided to adopt the NBIOT (Narrowband Internet of Things) protocol, which uses the 4G or 5G mobile networks as the default. "The technol- ogy is becoming quite affordable in Australia and quite widespread – three different com- munications companies offer it so there is competition. It's pretty well-suited to water – it can work well in basements or in cabinets." At Yorkshire Water, however, Bright describes taking an "agnostic approach" by adopting NBIOT alongside LPWAN (Low Power, Wide Area Network) and FlexNet pro- tocols, depending on advice from the supply chain. The latter two options are o–en used over private or proprietary networks. Bright explained: "One of the key les- sons is that we need to be looking at more than just the water industry when we talk about networks. Because there are so many other users out there that are really inter- ested in IoT networks and trying to get the most out of them. I think there's going to be a big push for cross-industry working in IoT deployments over the next 5 years." Using fibre optic cables as a sensing device could be a technology factor that helps to integrate the water network with other services and economic spheres. The bundles of fibres – either newly laid or re- purposing existing sub-surface cables – can be used to "sense" changes in the vicinity of the cable, such as vibrations, acoustic distur- bances, or changes in ground conditions. Fibre optics can potentially be an impor- tant component of a smart water network, while offering the similar potential ben- efits to gas and electricity companies and even transport providers – all while also carrying the data needed by our Netflix streaming habits. As Bright says, there are no regulatory barriers in place, but the cross-vector busi- ness case is not yet in place. "Using water networks to deploy fibre is now possible in the UK, we had DWI [Drinking Water Inspec- torate] approval a couple of years ago. But the technical and commercial model needs to be developed. "Theoretically, as these IoT networks are rolled out over the coming years, we need to have the masts in those locations in order for us to use them, and those masts need to be connected via fibre. There could be a nice symbiotic relationship between tel- ecoms and the water sector in the future, but a lot of work needs to be done before that materialises." With the Environment Agency due to extend its expectations on which parts of the country are under "water stress" and can therefore move to compulsory metering rollouts, the workshop and panel discus- sion offered a timely debate on how to stack up value against the high costs of installing or upgrading AMI meters. There were no definitive answers, but the case studies and workshop drew an outline of what could be achieved, and was already being piloted. Elaine Knutt, interim UW Innovate editor Utility Week Live Summit special report A network of sensors gives operators a real-time picture of what is going on in their networks

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