Affinity Water has won two entries totalling £344,291 in Ofwat’s Innovation in Water Challenge – run by Nesta Challenges as part of Ofwat’s £200m Innovation Fund.

The winning initiatives were produced in collaboration with other water companies, UK Universities and government agencies to improve the efficiency and resilience of its water supplies.

The two entries employ new and novel nature-based solutions to improve the resilience of existing infrastructure. The company will receive £249,791 of funding for its ‘Seagrass Seeds of Recovery’ bid and £94,500 for its ‘Smarter Tanks’ project.

Affinity Water will also contribute to the two projects from its own funds: £31,644, and £10,500 respectively.

Pauline Walsh, CEO of Affinity Water said:

“We are delighted to have succeeded in these two entries to the Innovation in Water Challenge from Ofwat and Nesta Challenges and we want to thank all of our partners for working so effectively and collaboratively with us to bring the bids together. We care passionately about delivering for our customers and for the environment and these projects enable us to try new and novel approaches to doing just that.

“Climate change and a growing demand for water are creating urgent challenges for the water sector and the more heads we put together to solve these problems the better. I congratulate Ofwat for setting up this Innovation Fund at a time when innovation must be our rallying cry.”

The Seagrass project uses nature itself to enhance coastal communities ecosystems, while Smarter Tanks will develop a ‘business model canvas’ to harness real-time monitoring and control solutions for existing water tanks and towers to improve efficiency when water is needed most such as during droughts.

Claire Beloe, Climate Change and Carbon Manager, Affinity Water explained:

“We are excited to lead the Seagrass Seeds of Recovery project at a time when there is more and more focus on the ecological and climate crises we are facing. This project will provide the water industry with a clear opportunity to champion a much needed diversification of nature- based activities. It fulfils a greater social purpose by facilitating the delivery of long-term multiple marine environmental benefits, with significant biodiversity net gain, water quality benefits, nutrient cycling and carbon reduction potential”.

Seagrass meadows enhance the stability of the coastal zone, locking carbon into the seabed at a rapid rate, improving water quality and creating habitat for hundreds of thousands of small animals - enhancing the resilience of coastal ecosystems.

The project will provide a blueprint for upscaling the restoration of seagrass to enhance the resilience of the estuarine and coastal waters of the Affinity Water and Anglian Water supply regions in Essex and Suffolk.

Recent estimates suggest that seagrass loss in the UK maybe as high as 92% - in the Essex and Suffolk areas thousands of hectares of seagrass have been lost.

Smarter Tanks

The £105,000 Smarter Tanks project will see Affinity Water working in collaboration with the University of Exeter, Aqua Civils and technical consultants to develop a ‘business model canvas’ for drinking water and rainwater storage tanks to harness real-time monitoring AND control solutions to explore optimised strategies for real-time top-up control.

Historically, decentralised water tanks, such as feeding tower blocks and rainwater harvesting tanks, automatically fill with mains water during peak water usage periods. In extended dry spells, rainwater harvesting systems fail to reduce demand on the potable network when they are most needed.

The trial itself represents a first in the UK for two novel Industry 4.0 (I4) applications using Smart demand management for existing drinking water and rainwater storage systems. Affinity has focussed the design of this proposal to target Operational System Resilience and Open Data themes.

The outcome of the trial will quantify the scale of the opportunity to implement smart water tank control at existing customer assets to build operational resilience and reduce disruption to customers.

Mumin Islam, Water Resources Planning Manager added:

“We are absolutely thrilled to be among the winners. Smarter Tanks is a really exciting project which looks to unlock ‘hidden gems’ by making the most use of existing water storage assets in a new way in order to build network resilience and pave the way for the industry to explore new solutions further.”