WET News

20 WET NEWS JULY 2014 Pressure management has been at the heart of Hartlepool Water's network strategy for almost 30 years, but a heavy reliance on manual intervention kept operational costs high. The challenge: Manual intervention can be costly H artlepool Water, part of Anglian Water Services, supplies water to the town of Hartlepool and surrounding villages in the North-east. The company serves a population of more than 92,000 people through 700km of mains pipe, and stores up to 48Ml of water to supply its network. With 26 District Zones (DZs) and 22 District Metered Areas (DMAs), Hartlepool Water already had 16 † xed outlet Pressure Pressure Reducing Valves (PRVs) were fairly well optimised. However, the company's heavy reliance on manual intervention kept up the operational costs of maintaining this performance. On one occasion when Hartlepool Water previously reduced PRV outlet pressure manually, it triggered an increase in customer contacts, resulting in expenditure of around £5,000 of operational and administration costs. Some Pressure Reducing Valve performance issues required a quarterly minor service schedule, for example, but these regular services were INSIGHT SAMPLING & MONITORING Hartlepool Water wanted to be able to identify performance issues and schedule service requirements more e‹ ectively carried out in addition to frequent manual pressure setting adjustments by Hartlepool Water technicians. Whilst this kept service levels high, it also meant high operational overheads. Kevin Ensell, Hartlepool Water's water operations manager for, explains: "We're a small but innovative company and are always looking for better, more e™ cient ways of doing things and delivering an even better level of service. We've tried basic systems around reducing night pressures in the past, but they've not been robust." Ensell continued: "We wanted to look at another approach with a more intelligent solution that could increase e™ ciency across multiple areas of our business, such as operational cost, customer service, repair, and maintenance. "We were particularly interested in the bene† ts of remote control and selected i2O Water as they were already successfully working with our parent company, and we knew they are the only company with a proven tested solution in this area." An optimal pressure pattern can be calculated automatically to deliver a stable target pressure to drive out excess pressure. A solution: Data capture helps monitor PRVs H artlepool Water trialled i2O's Automatic PRV Pressure Optimisation solution on four DMAs to mon- itor the impact of improved pressure control on the day-to- day operations of its network. Also, the company wanted to evaluate the impact of the technology on customer ser- vice, operational costs and maintenance scheduling. "In short, we wanted to see how i2O's solutions could reduce the frequency of opera- tional visits to adjust outlet pressure in the PRVs, and also reduce the number of cus- tomer contacts," explains Catherine Carlon, operations support manager for Hartle- pool Water. i2O's solution also provided the added benefit of capturing data to monitor the condition of the PRV. This was of specific interest to Hartlepool Water, as it would enable it to identify performance issues and sched- ule service requirements more effectively. Prior to the i2O installation, the four PRVs were operating with fixed outlet pressures, with Hartlepool Water record- ing a variation of critical point pressure of 2m at Burns Road and 4m at Tees Road. By feeding water pressure data from intelligent elec- tronic loggers in the network into i2O's software, Hartlepool Water was able to automati- cally calculate and implement an optimal pressure pattern to deliver a stable target pressure to customers and drive out excess pressure from managed zones. By optimising water pres- sure continuously and auto- matically in line with agreed customer service levels, and adjusting critical point pres- sure at the click of a button through a secure internet con- nection, Hartlepool Water could stabilise and safely reduce target critical point pressures to within 2m of the minimum required standard. This has successfully reduced leakage, burst fre- quency and the associated operational costs of repairs and leakage control. It has also extended the lifetime of mains and service connections. Between December 2012 and February 2013, the system reduced critical point pressure from 18m to 16m at the Burn Road DMA, one of Hartlepool Water's four pilot sites. This helped reduce the daily inflow into the DMA by 191m³/d or 8% of the total inflow. At the Tees Road site, the variation in critical point pres- sure was decreased from 4m to just 0.5m, helping reduce the daily inflow into the DMA by 127m³/d or 10.5% of the total inflow. By using the PRV condition monitoring data provided by the i2O system, Hartlepool Water has been able to move away from a reliance on fre- quent service visits, which have now been cut from quar- terly to annually without impacting customer service or reliability. The company has seen demand savings of 361m³/d across the four DMAs. Based on a marginal water cost of around 8p/m³, this reduction in daily demand equates to an annual cost saving in excess of £10,500 across the four trial DMAs. THE CONCEPT ¦ Automatic PRV Pressure Optimisation solution was trialled on four DMAs to monitor the impact of improved pressure control on the day-to-day operations ¦ By feeding water pressure data from intelligent electronic loggers in the network into i2O's software, an optimal pressure pattern could be calculated automatically to deliver a stable target pressure ¦ By adjusting critical point pressure through a secure internet connection, critical point pressures could be stabilised and safely reduced to within 2m of the minimum required standard NEED TO KNOW 1 Reducing PRV outlet pressure manually triggered resulted in expenditure of around £5,000 of operational and administration costs 2 The technology has extended the lifetime of mains and service connections 3 Before the trial, the four PRVs were operating with — xed outlet pressures THE VERDICT ¦ Demand savings of 361m³/d have been achieved across the four DMAs ¦ An annual cost saving of more than £10,500 across the four trial DMAs has been calculated ¦ Leakage and burst frequency have been reduced ¦ Service visits have been reduced from quarterly to annually The system reduced critical point pressure from 18m to 16m at the Burn Road DMA

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