Water efficiency dominates MOSL innovation winners

The successful projects to be awarded investment from MOSL’s Market Improvement Fund have been named, including four schemes seeking to address non-household water consumption.

Projects included simplifying wholesale tariffs, cleansing data held in the centralised operating system, and exploring ways to properly label void premises, as well as schemes to help customers use water efficiently.

The selection committee awarded £740,000 to eight bids out of 13 entries to the second round of the fund, which is funded via market performance standards (MPS) charges.

Steve Formoy, MOSL’s director of finance and project sponsor, commended the quality of entries and said: “We’re pleased to see so many projects tackling some of the biggest issues in the market, with several aiming to help the non-household market drive water efficiency benefits for customers. We look forward to following the successful applicants as their projects progress and sharing these updates with the market.”

The projects were:

• RWG Wholesale Tariff Simplification Development – led by Business Stream on behalf of the Retailer Wholesaler Group (RWG) and sponsored by Thames Water. This project follows a sector-wide consultation to refine and simplify wholesale tariffs. It will explore simplifying and aligning bands for volume, fixed meter charges, and water and waste tariffs.
• Automated Water Efficiency Audits – led and sponsored by Wave Utilities. This pilot scheme will utilise internet of things (IoT) technology across 250 customers to create a low-cost way to cut consumption at small commercial premises. Real-time data and insight will be shared with customers and the work will form a blueprint for retailers to engage consumers in water efficiency measures.

• REDUCED – Raising Efforts to Drive User Consumption Efficaciously Down – led by Isle Utilities and sponsored by Wave Utilities. This will create a searchable online portal for retailers to access emerging technologies related to customer pain-points, and as a platform for developer to reach retailers.

• Meter Condition Assessment – led and sponsored by Wave Utilities with Occutrace. The team will investigate 2,000 meter points believed to be broken to establish their condition to build a better picture of the state of assets and understand how much manually read meters are contributing to inaccurate consumption data in the market.

• Project ‘Discovery’ – Non-household customer segmentation and consumption benchmarking – led and sponsored by Anglian Water Services with Artesia Consulting. This aims to better understand the role of non-household usage in the wider sector’s demand challenges and inform water resource management planning. It will explore the value of customer segmentation and consumption benchmarking in delivering demand reduction to develop an industry-wide consumption benchmarking model.

• NAPS Data Quality Cleanse – led by IDenteq and sponsored by MOSL. This aims to improve the quality of market data relating to new and partial supply points (NAPS) by confirming if a premises is a genuine business connection or needs de-registering and whether they are completed to be tradeable in the market. Reports will be shared with all trading parties.

• Consumption awareness and benchmarking – led by Yorkshire Water and sponsored by MOSL. This will assess the best ways to centrally use existing granular consumption data from different trading parties’ assets related to consumption to accurately forecast non-household demand.

• Business voids research to inform optimum market outcomes – led by and sponsored by Yorkshire Water and Business Stream. The project will involve a review of options to cut the number of business premises incorrectly labelled as void properties. Insight will be shared with trading parties, MOSL and Ofwat to support decision making (including PR24 plans), and give better service to customers including fair bills.

This is the second round of entries to the fund, which offers up to £150,000 to innovative bids designed to improve common market challenges.