The water sector needs its own ‘iPhone moment’

The water industry needs a radical innovation moment to shake up how things work, like the iPhone did to mobile phones. The latest pressure reducing valves can make this a reality.

Water companies are actively ­looking for ways to be smarter. To know about, and fix, problems before the customer sees the effect, to better predict and more accurately map leakages to reduce losses and hone maintenance issues.

But when up against increasing demands and often ageing infrastructure, that is easier said than done. It is unlikely we will get there with piecemeal improvements, either; the industry needs a radical innovation moment that shakes up the fundamentals of how things work – much like the iPhone did to the mobile phone market in 2007. And, as it turns out, valves are a good place to start.

A “smart” approach has long been on the industry’s wishlist, but it becomes ­increasingly important day by day.

Look at the uproar in the UK when hosepipe bans were suggested in response to a heatwave – outrageous, in the eyes of many, when weighed against the three billion litres of treated water lost every single day of 2017 in England and Wales. For utilities faced with the task of operating with and upgrading often Victorian-era infrastructure, it’s very much a rock-and-a-hard-place situation.

Proactive, not reactive

There has been innovation and improvement in the water sector over the years. But it has been of an incremental kind, tweaking engineering designs and adding a patchwork of digital assets such as pressure sensors here and there.

This incremental approach is crucial – as was the progression through the Nokia 3210, 3310, 3410 – but now it’s time for the iPhone moment.

A smart system must be proactive, not reactive. That means predicting, identifying and fixing problems before they affect customers – or if that’s not possible, communicating ahead of time that there will be disruption.

This applies to leaks but also to water quality. Currently, water quality is typically tested by taking samples from the tap and sending them to a lab. There is no visibility within the distribution infrastructure.

Imagine a system where problems are identifiable and fixable before they reach the customer. Where problems could be spotted and located to a fine level of granularity – making maintenance and repairs easier, cheaper and more efficient. Where utilities can optimise their systems against multiple parameters across the breadth of their network.

One crucial technology for realising this vision is the next generation of pressure reducing valves (PRVs). PRVs have been around for more than a century, only recently undergoing significant innovation from an engineering standpoint. Now they are undergoing a second, digital transformation.

Intelligently optimised control

Modern PRVs are equipped with sensors, collecting information on metrics such as pressure and even water quality. ­Crucially – thanks to modern, more affordable ­battery, communication and energy harvesting technologies – they can now feed back this information to the control room for analysis and action. For example, if leaks are detected, the valve can be controlled remotely to reduce pressure and therefore losses. PRVs will be the “smart valves” at the centre of an intelligently optimised and controlled network, used to deliver fine pressure control in any way needed.

The smartest systems will use technologies such as analytics and machine learning to constantly analyse that incoming stream of data to optimise maintenance schedules and asset replacement and even predict problems before they occur.

Utilities implementing such a system would find themselves managing lit networks, rather than dark ones; enjoying ­visibility and control they never had before.

An iPhone moment

Water infrastructure upgrades are expensive and time-consuming. However, this would represent an iPhone moment: once the radical shift is made, the market can return to incremental innovation. The first iPhone may have been a revolution, but the subsequent models have been evolutions since.

Once a data-rich, sensor-soaked network is in the ground, utilities will be able to more easily implement incremental upgrades over time. Connectivity means software and firmware can potentially be upgraded without excavation and the control room can invest in advanced analytics.

A lot has been written about topics such as the industrial internet of things (IIoT). Undoubtedly, societies stand to gain a great deal from smart factories, grids and cities. But a smarter approach to water is an equally important step. With modern valve, sensor, communication, battery and energy harvesting technologies, forward-thinking utilities are poised to take it. By doing so we stand to cut leakages and improve water quality – and utilities can enjoy their iPhone moment.