Smart grid communications specialist Sensus has urged the Government to develop a smart water network to drive efficiency and improve water management.
Sensus proposes that the Government and water utilities should collaborate on a ‘Best Practise for Smart Water Networks’ initiative, which would provide a long-term strategy to drive water efficiencies and accelerate the adoption of new technologies to drive change.
Sensus believes that the initiative would help manage water resources more efficiently as well as helping avoid short term solutions which negatively impact customers. A smart water network would be based on initiatives already underway in the energy sector.
Andy Slater, Director at Sensus, said:
“We have seen in the energy sector initiatives to define the Smart Grid at European and national level and to develop the use cases model behind these. The recent droughts across England have highlighted the problems of an ageing water distribution network and raise the question, could the water industry replicate this momentum to enable utilities to realise the service level improvements, efficiencies gains and other benefits which will be realised by using real-time data across their networks?”
Mr Slater added that ‘digitising’ the water network and making it ‘smart’ is central to tackling the growing problems of managing water.
According to Sensus, by developing the ‘best practise’ water companies could demonstrate how digitising the distribution network would enable them to meet the increasing environmental and economic demands being asked of them.
Mr Slater said:
“It would be timely for the government and other stakeholders to give a lead to the industry, by looking beyond the possibilities of installing water meters, to establishing a ‘Best Practise for Smart Water Networks’. This could be achieved by establishing a pan-industry Smart Water Advisory Group which would work closely with the Smart Water Forum, SWAN.”
By embracing a smart water network, Sensus argues that regulators and utilities would invest with confidence in technologies that would drive a step change in water network performance.
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