Anglian Water is partnering with Schneider Electric to build a smarter business which utilises the vast volumes of big data being generated, enabling it to reduce leakage, reduce energy bills and streamline operations.
Anglian Water is the largest water supply and water recycling utility in England and Wales by geographic area. It covers over 10,000 square miles from Humber to the Thames estuary and from Buckinghamshire to Lowestoft, servicing approximately 6 million customers.
The utility operates in a particularly challenging market - its supply demand balance is under threat from a number of issues, including climate change, growth and sustainability. In light of this the company is focused on the importance of efficient water resource management and in particular, leakage control - demonstrated by its investment of £20 million per year on leakage management and the employment of 300 staff who are fixing and finding up to 27,000 leaks each year.
Anglian Water targets 10% reduction on leakage levels by 2020
Reducing leakage is a priority for customers – by 2020 Anglian Water is planning to reduce leakage levels by 10 per cent from its 2015 baseline.
Commenting on the project, Matt Walker, Strategic Programme Manager for Anglian Water said:
“Implementations on the scale of one we have just completed are hugely complex and fraught with risk. However, the way we have worked collaboratively with Schneider has been fantastic and a great example of what a truly integrated team can achieve.”
Partnering with Schneider Electric, Anglian Water embarked on the significant operation to replace its wireless telemetry system - the largest UHF telemetry system that exists in Western Europe today. It is comprised of 6,500 operational sites, over 12,000 telemetry outstations and 639,090 points.
Anglian Water implemented Schneider Electric’s StruxureWare SCADA Expert ClearSCADA solution, known as the Integrated Remote Intelligence Service (IRIS) system. This was used to handle real-time wireless data transmission and provide a software platform for the telemetry system. In order to get a true view of the business, it was critical that all the main systems could interoperate and facilitate access to pools of disparate data which could be combined to provide real business insight.
This formed the basis of the OT (operations technology) and IT convergence drive at Anglian Water. Using the new system, the utility is able to monitor every drop flowing through its network, provide real-time monitoring of its 38,000 km of water mains and 76,000 km of sewers to ensure effective working order and smooth running of services.
As the organisation’s first foray into advanced big data exploitation, the project established a key data collection and control component for a second project specifically addressing the water leakage management area.
ILPM system houses and displays all data needed to manage the entire water network
To address this, an Integrated Leakage and Pressure Management system (ILPM) was developed using Schneider Electric’s Water Management Suite (WMS) technology. This has enabled Anglian Water to facilitate collection of data across multiple systems (through its integration with virtually all of the utility’s corporate systems) to improve processing and offer visualisation of the data through actionable dashboards. As a result, the system has empowered users to effectively manage leak detection (prioritisation, planning and productivity monitoring) and complete internal and regulatory reports much more easily.
The new solution has 30 interfaces that integrate with a number of corporate systems including iREM – automatic regulatory reporting, and SAP. Integration with SAP has enabled increased work-flow efficiency, through automatic raising (and cancelling) of work orders by the system, from alarms.
Users across the business can now raise leakage jobs directly from ILPM, view SAP customer data and create bespoke dashboards to monitor and control leakage.
David Jacobs, Leakage Data Manager at Anglian Water, said the ILMP system houses and displays all the data needed to manage the water company’s entire water network, ensuring Anglian is aware of any leakage as soon as it occurs. Over 100 people in the company are now using the system and driving efficiencies in leakage reporting and planning, he added.
Built-in alarm pressure logic increases operational efficiency by 10%
Anglian Water can drive similar efficiencies through built-in alarm pressure logic. This has enabled users to reduce the number of redundant alarms and suppress consequential alarms caused by fieldwork maintenance. Now, employees are only responding to alarms if genuinely needed.
This has increased operational efficiency by approximately 10 per cent in jobs saved. With predictive analysis capabilities, users can also improve forecasting, for example, to see how long it takes to empty and fill tanks and anticipate the time needed to respond to problems. Using built-in intelligence, teams can now take over management of the entire network, rather than just individual sites.
Next steps
In the future, Anglian Water intends to extend the relationship with Schneider Electric to evolve ILPM through pressure management benefit tracking and integration with online hydraulic models.
It also plans to trial Schneider Electric’s Aquis solution, which provides past and real-time network modelling, as well as forecasting capabilities to reduce operational and energy costs associated with water distribution activity.
Anglian Water can now support future advancements and use the platform as the foundation of its key business and operational objectives for AMP6, AMP7 and beyond.