Desalination & Reuse Handbook - Flipbook - Page 90
IDA
WATER SECURITY
HANDBOOK
THAMES WATER, UK: SMART METERING AND PRESSURE MANAGEMENT
In 2015, Thames Water, the UK’s largest water and wastewater
service provider, turned to Sensus, a technology brand owned by
Xylem, to develop a smart water system that would identify leaks
and reduce losses throughout the network. The potential benefits
were enormous. Thames Water provides drinking water to 10 million
people through a network of 31,000 km of water mains pipes,
registering daily losses of 654,000 m3/d in 2013/14.
After considering options in 2014, Thames Water opted to install a
Sensus, end-to-end smart water solution, controlled and delivered
via a FlexNet® communication network. The service included
implementing sensors and smart meters; a secure, two-way
communications network, and back-office data management. As the
sensors and meters gather information about system performance,
the two-way communications network updates operators hourly and
allows them to access data on demand. Once the system detects an
irregularity, it broadcasts an alert. By means of a remote-controlled
valve system, operators can reduce flow to the affected area, even
cutting it off entirely; minimising losses until the issue is resolved.
The benefits are not simply in preventing physical loss. Smart
metering allows suppliers to bill customers for their exact usage,
ensuring bills accurately reflect usage. A personalised billing system
also encourages customers to better understand their water usage
and access a breakdown of their water charges online. In 2018,
Thames Water reported smart meter equipped households reduced
their water consumption by 13% on average, compared to nonmetered users.
Reading, Thames Water HQ
As of 2017, Thames Water had installed 239,000 smart meters across
its network as part of a commitment to use an advanced metering
infrastructure (AMI). In 2017/18, 1,437 leaks were repaired in
customer homes after being detected by smart meters, with Thames
Water crediting 5,900 m3/d in water savings to smart meter leak
detection (equivalent to £4.3 million in savings).
LYON, FRANCE: ADVANCED METERING
INFRASTRUCTURE AND FIXED-NETWORK
ACOUSTIC LEAK DETECTION
Serving 1.3 million people across 54 municipalities, Greater Lyon
has the second largest population served of any water distribution
network in France. Following the award of an eight-year drinking
water production and distribution management contract to Veolia
in 2014, smart technology has been rolled out rapidly across the
network. Before the award, Veolia had served only around 85% of
consumers, with the rest served by contracts held by Lyonnaise des
Eaux and Saur. The 2014 contract combined operations of the cities
network into a single management project, with the stated aim of
reducing network leakage by 13% by 2018.
Since then, Veolia has installed advanced metering infrastructure
(AMI) to monitor water consumption; installing 400,000 smart
meters. The Téléo metering technology allows customers to check
their daily consumption online and can be set to notify customers via
text or email when abnormally high consumption – one of the chief
indicators of a potential leak – occurs in their connection.
Lyon is unusual from a leak detection standpoint in that a detailed
NRW reduction plan was formulated from the outset in order to
meet the strategic objectives of the tender. With clear plans and
objectives, following in-depth pilots and trials, the roll-out of smart
technology has played a vital role in Veolia’s estimated water savings
of 33,000 m3/d.
In its use of acoustic leak detection (ALD) technology and its
communications network integration, Veolia’s project exhibits some
interesting innovations. With 6,000 sensors (5,500 permanent,
82
500 movable), the project is among the largest installations of ALD
technology in the world. The sensors, provided by Gutermann, are
installed across 2,000 km of the most sensitive parts of Grand Lyon’s
water distribution network.
Under normal conditions, Gutermann’s ZONESCAN ALPHA system
collects and transmits data to the company’s server via proprietary
radio receivers for processing, with proposed leaks delivered to the
customer’s SCADA system. In this case, however, the ALD system
was integrated into Veolia’s advanced metering infrastructure
(AMI), avoiding the need to construct separate radio receivers for
acoustic data and halving the unit cost of the acoustic sensor portion
of the project. The supply of the sensors also involved integrating
Gutermann’s acoustic correlation software into Veolia’s network
management system, which built on previous work undertaken
between Veolia, Gutermann and IBM on systems integration.
Integrating sensors into the existing AMI communications networks
in this way is unusual, and remains one of just a handful of such
projects globally.
