The UK Met Office announces a new A–Z of storm names every September, officially beginning the new storm season for the UK. In winter 2021, the Met Office named the first two storms in as many weeks, with projections from mid-December expecting that a further six storms would hit the country leading into the new year.

Despite the predictability of storm season, the impact on utilities companies routinely causes significant problems. In the wake of Storm Arwen on November 26 2021, approximately 3000 homes in northern England remained without power for more than a week. This reflects the challenge of harsh seasonal weather on utilities companies — a challenge that is only set to escalate as global climate change makes erroneous weather events a more common occurrence.

Unsurprisingly, an excessive surplus of water can cause problems in the water network. If assets such as pumping stations become flooded due to a high volume of rainfall or overflowing surface water sources, it can cause further flooding in domiciles and office spaces. It’s for this reason that water and sewage companies are obligated under the Water Industry Act 1991 to ensure their systems are resilient and that the area they serve has effective drainage.

Yet ensuring resilience in the water network is no simple task due to the size of the network and the number of distributed assets. It’s for this reason that water operators depend upon supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems at remote sites and, increasingly, an effective data management and control platform. The local control systems are necessary to accurately monitor and control equipment, but an effective overarching system makes it possible to remotely address issues as they arrive.

For example, Novotek routinely works with water companies across the country to help them establish more effective automation setups to facilitate remote decision-making in a streamlined, efficient manner. One of the challenges that arises frequently is that of data silos, where field engineers may have access to pertinent equipment health or performance data that is valuable but inaccessible to other teams. Fortunately, this is best — and easily — addressed with an overarching system that collects data once and presents different views to different stakeholders.

Not every system will be well positioned to provide flexible data views to users and be capable of ensuring effective response to floods. Ideally, an industrial automation platform should also feature effective data visualisation, as well as predictive analytics that can use locally collected data to anticipate the likelihood of asset damage or outage. These attributes allow operators to easily coordinate an effective and rapid response to seasonal flooding as it occurs, at the most vulnerable or at-risk parts of a network before further problems ensue.

As winter storms continue to become more frequent and impactful, water operators must be increasingly prepared to combat the effects and maintain uptime of network assets. Automation has long been a necessity due to the scale of operations, but the effectiveness of automation deployments has never been so important.

The best approach may be to let the data dictate where to focus your innovation efforts. Or, if there’s a lack of useful data, then that itself may be the answer.

In this whitepaper, Novotek UK and Ireland explains how utilities operators can get to grips with data management to create an effective data-driven approach to innovation. Covering how to consolidate and modernise assets for data collection, how to make sense of utilities data and which method to use to get the most long-term value from data, the whitepaper is an invaluable resource for utilities operations managers and engineers.

Complete the form below to receive a copy of the whitepaper.

Innovation has been a buzzword uttered by many a water provider in recent years. Since the UK’s water services regulation authority, Ofwat, published its price review 2019 (PR19) paper in 2017 and made innovation a focal point, most water providers have considered the use of new technologies to bolster productivity, reduce costs and strengthen continuity of service. This has made data acquisition, aggregation and analysis technologies more appealing to water operators — however, introducing new systems is understandably complicated in such complex networks.

The water industry’s need to innovate is not going to pass any time soon. In December 2020, Ofwat opened a consultation on what the industry should look like by 2040 and how the regulator, the sector and stakeholders can meet the challenges of the intervening years.

At the launch, Ofwat commented:

It’s the first of these suggestions, smart networks, that initially appears to be relatively easy for water operators to develop. A smart water network consists of various analytical, measurement and sensing devices and systems that offer insights into everything from water quality and pipe pressure to pump speeds and ambient temperatures in reserves. This field data can provide various insights to stakeholders.

However, a physical network as expansive and complex as water infrastructure presents ample opportunity for devices and systems to be deployed in an isolated and inefficient way. This means that its very likely certain raw data will be collected numerous times, stored in multiple disparate systems and siloed from certain groups of stakeholders. In our view, this isn’t a smart network; it’s a pseudo-intelligent network. If the data is being collected and used to inform strategic decisions, then it stands to reason that the systems collecting and housing that data should be deployed strategically as well.

Water operators at the start of their deployment journey can avoid a wide range of headaches by considering the three Rs of data:

• Reduce overlap of data collection
  
• Reuse collected data for multiple purposes
  
• Repackage data for multiple stakeholders

Reducing overlap in data collection means ensuring that raw data points are collected only once by a single sensor or system, and stored in a clearly defined system, such as a Historian software. This avoids the expense of investing in multiple systems to collect the same data several times for different purposes, as well as the cost of setting up those systems.

Reusing collected data for multiple purposes builds on this. The insights a technician will need to draw from machine data will differ significantly to that of an operations manager or area manager. However, the raw data can be fed into various reports and calculations to offer different kinds of insights. For example, the energy requirement data of water treatment equipment is relevant not only for energy usage reports, but also for sustainability reporting. Making the data readily available for multiple reporting purposes enhances business flexibility.

These values are especially important in the water sector, where context is key and the interplay between different parts of the network can have a tangible impact on overall operations.

One of the costliest oversights that many businesses encounter when focussing on data collection is that technicians often embrace a silo mentality, where they understand the value that data offers to their immediate machine or area of operation. For example, it might be that pump pressure monitoring is perceived as being valid only insofar as it informs maintenance schedules for that system. This mentality might make it appear to be a good idea to invest, separately, in sensor devices to measure water flow rates in the local area, which monitor water flow and pipe pressure.

Instead, repackaging the pump pressure data to support analysis of water flow would reduce overlap between systems, and in turn reduce the time and cost expenditure of configuring another system to also collect pressure data.

This same principle of the three Rs can be applied to data collection and analysis of all kinds throughout the entire network. In effect, data should be treated similarly to the water network itself; collected from a single source and transferred into a defined system, from which it can be supplied to where it is needed, for what it is needed for. If water operators are truly to improve productivity and reduce operational costs with innovation and new technologies, the key is to find ways of strategically collecting data once and using it in multiple ways. Doing so enables the company to be more flexible, adaptable and prepared for changing market conditions.

Click here to find out more about the 3 Rs of automation data with our infographic guide.

There are several regulations that Dutch water companies must adhere to. Both national and EU regulations strictly control the cleanliness of the water that is put back into the water system. For example, the European Drinking Water Directive specifies a total of 48 microbiological, chemical and indicator parameters that must be monitored and tested regularly to meet the standard.

While some of the standards are set lower than the European Drinking Water Directive, for substances such as boron, bromate and fluoride, the Dutch national legislation adds a number of other substances to monitor such as Cryptosporidium and Polychlorobiphenyls. This means that overall, the water quality in The Netherlands is internationally recognised as being particularly high.

To meet these standards, water companies must ensure that they have strict procedures in place to meet the regulatory standards. While the water infrastructure in the Netherlands is particularly developed, there are still improvements that can be made to help the water companies effectively feed back this information to the government. 

The need for monitoring

One of the key challenges in the Dutch water industry is outdated equipment that makes it difficult for water companies to collect the information required across the treatment process. A 2017 report by the Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu stated that “in order to take preventative actions [against harmful contaminants in the sources of drinking water], it is necessary to monitor possible hazardous contaminants through the water supply chain.”

The same report stated that while most Dutch drinking water companies are improving their operational monitoring and management, stricter controls may be brought in in the future. Rather than monitoring for a concentration of 1 microgram per litre, the report suggests that the value may be lowered to 0,1 microgram per litre in the future.

While this increased control may be some time away, it’s vital that the Dutch water companies, from all aspects of the water supply chain, consider their reporting procedures.

However, they are often stunted by outdated equipment. Across Europe, the water industry is plagued with ageing infrastructure. There are numerous pieces of equipment used in the sanitisation process of water, as well as the pumps and vessels used to get the water around the plant. However, if the equipment is not able to be connected to an overarching control system, the plant loses the opportunity to collect important data.

Updating equipment

Even in a country with a water infrastructure as well funded as The Netherlands’, it is still difficult for water companies to update all their equipment in one go. Instead, water companies must draw up a plan of the processes that they want to be able to monitor better.

Once they have completed this plan, they can upgrade equipment that allows them to do this. For example, infrastructure managers may decide to first invest in connected equipment to help them feedback the level of contaminants at each stage of the purification process.

Once the equipment has been updated and there are plethora of connected devices reporting information, it is necessary to control these using an overarching control system to control and gather this information. This will allow the infrastructure manager to make actionable decisions and share this information with authorities when necessary.

Reporting

While water companies have kept manual records of contaminant levels for decades to comply with reporting legislation, this is not the most efficient way of doing this.

All water companies must follow strict quality control procedures internally and report to the Regional Public Health Inspector (RHI), at least on an annual basis. If concerns are raised at any point about the safety of drinking water, the water company must be able to provide supporting data within a short period, so any outbreak can be traced effectively.

When using manual data collection, it is time consuming to log the data, import it into spreadsheets and print the records. Due to the amount of human involvement in the process, mistakes could easily be made, or the historic data may be lost if not correctly filed.

To meet the regulations of the water industry, it is essential that water companies use a control system that allows them to manage this data effectively.

Managing data

If water companies invest in equipment to help them to collect data throughout the water purification process, it is worthless without a SCADA system that can collect and manage the data.

Not only will the SCADA system give the plant manager more awareness and control over the processes in the water treatment plant, it will allow the regulatory information to be safely collected and stored.

By using a SCADA system such as Novotek’s iFix Automation Software and digitising the collection of important data, this will reduce the time taken collecting the data manually and reduces the likelihood of human error. The information can then be displayed in a clear report, alerting the plant manager to any discrepancies. When required, the report can then be sent to the regulatory authorities.

As historic data is so valuable in the water industry, it is ideal for plant managers in this industry to also use an information system that can gather, archive and compress large amounts of data. If any problem is detected much later in the water treatment process, having this large volume of data available will make it much easier to identify the origin of the contaminant.

Having a large amount of data available through investing in better sensors and automation equipment across a water treatment plant will help plant managers to have a better awareness of their industry. However, without the right SCADA system and historic information system, such as GE Historian, the investment in the connected devices is worthless.

With water management being so important in The Netherlands and the water industry leading the way in Europe, it is likely that regulatory control will increase to ensure the country retains its reputation for some of Europe’s cleanest drinking water.

With this in mind, water treatment plant and infrastructure managers need to make sure that their plant uses an up-to-date control system that is relevant to the digital age to manage their data, to ensure that they can be one step ahead of any future regulatory changes.