The clean water and sanitation goal

There are six sub-goals to this, but the one that concerns most in the developed world is:

6.3 By 2030, improve water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping and minimising release of hazardous chemicals and materials, halving the proportion of untreated wastewater, and substantially increasing recycling and safe reuse globally.

In the UK, it is illegal for water companies to dump untreated sewage from discharge pipes without a permit. Yet data released by the Environment Agency revealed that water companies discharged raw sewage into English rivers 372,533 times last year. This is often due to very heavy rainfall, blockages, and unexpected equipment failures. Key to these issues, is having the data available to alert you to potential issues before they occur. These issues must be set in the context from the pressures coming from PR19, such as supply shortages and pricing, which is why there is now an additional focus on using data to address the sector’s environmental impact.

At Novotek, we are using software from GE Digital to help Water/Wastewater companies improve their operations and practices using the latest HMI/SCADA software applications. You can explore real customer examples here, but in summary these are:

• Using data analytics to detect and predict leaks within the network before they even occur. Thus, allowing preventative maintenance to take place, which in turn reduces wastage.
• Using smart monitoring of sewerage controls to prevent flooding and bursting; and combining this with metrology data to predict periods of heavy rainfall.
• Prevent wastage of fresh water by monitoring reservoir fill and usage to avoid wastage from overflow, as well as monitoring clean water pipes to avoid wastage of freshly treated water.

In practice, many water companies lack the right data systems and processes to extract meaningful predictions. There is also a lack of experience in the complex area of data analytics. Having a partner, such as Novotek, can help water companies over come these hurdles and allow them to effectively utilise the data.

Usually there are a number of key steps we go through with customers. These are:

• Conduct an audit to determine what data is currently available, where the data is, and where the gaps in data are against the objectives they are trying to achieve.
• Assessing who needs what data, and what they should do with it.
• Ensure these data systems are connected and able to communicate with each other. This might involve rearchitecting, upgrading SCADA systems, new hardware, and the use of middleware.
• Finally, presenting the data in a way that transforms it into tangible predictions or recommendations.

To find out how Novotek are helping water companies achieve their sustainability and resilience goals, get in touch with us here

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.