Yorkshire Water has become the first major water and sewage company in the UK to trial smart analytics to find leaks in its network, according to a recent announcement.
The firm provides real time flow and pressure data to both Servelec Technologies and Artesia Consulting who look for disruptions to normal patterns. Discrepancies are to be flagged and passed back to Yorkshire Water who investigate with the aim of fixing the leaks without customers noticing interruption to their service.
The trial started in January and is taking place in Hebden Bridge and west Sheffield, areas which service around 50,000 customers. Yorkshire Water wanted to run the trial in these locations to understand the benefits in both a rural and urban environment.
Sam Bright, who works within Yorkshire Water’s Innovation Team, which is funding the trial, said: “We are thrilled to start this project which we are hoping will have a real positive impact on customers.
“Continuing to provide customers with a constant water supply is one of our five big goals and this technology should help us do that.
“It also has the potential to predict where leaks may occur in the future which is extremely exciting.”
The company is investing £200,000 in the year-long trial and if successful it will be rolled out across the entire network.
Yorkshire Water will be investing £71m in leakage reduction next year with the aim of reducing it by 40% by 2025.
Yorkshire Water Head of Water Distribution, Andrew Roach said: “Yorkshire Water is striving to be industry leading in leakage performance. The use of smart analytics alongside other Innovations we are currently developing, will be a key enabler to providing a ‘silent service’ to the customer, identifying and resolving the issue quicker than we ever have before.”
Alan Cunningham at Servelec Technologies, added: “We’re looking forward to this trial and the opportunity to prove to Yorkshire Water just what the Datatective self-learning Flowsure system is capable of.
“Water companies are under increasing media and regulatory pressure to reduce the amount of water wasted through leakage. It is particularly critical for a water company to know which leaks need fixing as a priority before major disruption occurs.”
