Yorkshire Water has begun rolling out devices across its region to manage water flow centrally from the company’s control room.
The mechanical devices can be quickly operated in case of an emergency and have a calm network function to adjust the speed of closure to each valve’s individual requirement, thereby keeping pressure transients to a minimum.
“Using the remote battery powered actuators has already seen us saving time, money and has allowed us to redeploy colleagues that would usually operate the valves manually,” Sarah Gledhill, innovation project manager at Yorkshire, explained. “Our customers may not always be aware of updates and improvements like this, but they will see the benefit through a reduced number of bursts and much quicker resolutions if something does go wrong on the network.”
Yorkshire said the devices reduce installation costs and manual handling time, bringing savings of around £20,000 per asset, per annum.
The mobile network is used to send messages from the devices, which allows them to be used in places that would otherwise be inaccessible.
Jim Tattersfield, R2M’s business development manager, added that the actuators offer protection to the health and safety of staff as well as increased network resilience and risk mitigation.