A new report from Northern Ireland Water is flagging up the massive potential for its asset base to become a catalyst for transforming the country’s energy system.

NI Water’s Power of Water report published yesterday highlights major opportunities which can help Northern Ireland to make the transition to a low carbon future and argues that there is a collective need to create much greater flexibility in the way the country generates, stores and uses energy.

The report says that It is that NI Water is working towards a range of potential answers using existing, proven technologies, including:

An Intelligent Operations Centre (IOC) which will use advanced data analytics to actively control when and how much electricity the company uses to help Northern Ireland Electricity Networks (NIEN) balance supply and demand at peak times - the utility is the biggest consumer of electricity in Northern Ireland. Currently under construction, the IOC uses high resolution data from water and wastewater ‘production line’ assets to create the necessary flexibility in NI Water’s energy usage.

Storage batteries – NI Water’s 3,000 sites spread across Northern Ireland also have the potential, planning policy permitting, to host batteries which can store electricity from renewable sources and feed it into the grid and local networks as required. An enterprise battery solution which could help balance supply and demand at a local and regional level. The sites already have connections which meet the highest technical requirements, including the cyber secure connections to link the batteries in each location to the grid.

Reservoirs - could also be used not just to store water, but also as a source of energy which could be released at critical times of the year when demand exceeds renewable energy supply.

Electrolysis - results from a recent 10 kilowatt (kW) Hydrogen and Oxygen Pilot at Kinnegar Wastewater Treatment Works (WwTW) have shown how NI Water’s early investment in electrolysis has the potential to be a real energy game-changer. A large 1 megawatt (MW) Demonstrator model will arrive in Belfast by the end of 2021

The supply of green hydrogen that electrolysis produces could help start the shift away from historical dependence on diesel to power Northern Ireland’s public transport, including buses, and heavy goods vehicles.

In addition, the Kinnegar Pilot confirms that the oxygen ‘by-product’ that electrolysis produces could increase the capacity of some of  NI Water's wastewater treatment plants by 25%.

“Change is possible - if collectively we can agree and implement a common approach”

The report places a particular emphasis on the need to take a collective approach to strengthening the resilience of Northern Ireland’s critical infrastructure to transition to a low carbon economy.

The report says:

“Taken together what these projects confirm, is that change is possible, if collectively we can agree and implement a common approach. NI Water is all too aware that we cannot deliver a sustainable future on our own and will need to keep working with our partners across government, the other utilities, the regulator, business and the third sector. “

Commenting on an enterprise battery solution via its sites, the report says that such an alignment would cut costs by doing away with the need to buy new sites for the batteries and construct the necessary grid connections. It draws attention to the fact that it would seem likely that “any alternative solution would have to meet each of those substantial costs, so adding to the overall price of supplying electricity and water in Northern Ireland.”

“Avoiding duplication of effort and costs, therefore, has clear advantages for Northern Ireland as a whole, but it would need to be delivered, and funded, as a joint enterprise across government, the utilities and the regulator,” the report says.

The water company has already started to take tentative steps in that direction NI Water plans to install 6 MWh of batteries at sites including Dunore near Antrim to show the potential of such an approach.

NI Water and NIE Networks have also begun to map how their physical assets align to understand the full potential and feasibility of such a joint approach. The utilities are currently engaged in a joint exercise to map their assets and understand the synergies between them and how they could be used to develop new and existing demand response and energy services.

The exercise will look specifically at how the two organisations could align their control systems and cyber secure infrastructure to maximise their use of both existing assets such as water pumps and potentially new and innovative assets such as electrolysers, stand-by generators and new forms of energy storage whatever form that takes, battery, kinetic or heat.

Commenting on the potential of pumped hydro storage using reservoirs, the report points out that NI Water inherited a diverse range of such reservoirs - some large, some small, some in use and some de-commissioned – which could be used to produce hydro power. This includes a pumped hydro scheme which was under construction at Camlough in the early seventies but was halted.

“The demands of the renewable energy era, however, suggest that we need to think again about how we can revitalise such assets as part of an integrated energy plan for Northern Ireland.”

“Hydro pump storage systems are another storage option, and a similar mapping exercise/study needs to be carried out to understand the potential of NI Water’s past and present reservoirs to act as a reserve power system for when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.”

Click here to download The Power of Water