In an Expert Focus article for WaterBriefing , Mark Coates, International Director of Public Policy and Advocacy at Bentley Systems, and Joe Lawson, Account Manager of Water Utilities for Northern Europe, discuss the work Bentley Systems is doing on behalf of Thames Water to improve its service and why a smart meters rollout to all homes across the UK must be treated as a national priority.

The software team at Thames Water has developed a solution which gives the organisation the ability to make real-time decisions about the operation of the UK’s water network as well as respond more quickly to blockages, leaks, and burst pipes.

Photo l to r: Mark Coates & Joe Lawson 

Mark Coates and Joe Lawson: After what has been the driest summer in fifty years – exacerbated by extreme, record-breaking temperatures – the Environment Agency declared drought status across eight regions of England on Friday 12 August 2022.

In the seven days that followed, drought status was declared in a ninth region of England – Yorkshire – and in several areas of south-west Wales too.

As a result, households across the UK have been urged to cut their water usage by taking shorter showers, letting their cars go dusty, and by learning to love a brown lawn. And with a hose pipe ban in place in many parts of the UK, you can forget about filling the hot tub or the paddling pool too.

Whilst the water industry is working hard on its response to the environmental challenges that currently face us, we know we can, and must, do more if we are to future-proof our water supply – not just this summer, but for the years and decades to come.

Sir John Armitt – Chair of the National Infrastructure Commission – recently called for increased deployment of advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) across the UK’s water network. It’s a call we welcome.

Like many of us in the industry, Sir John believes that this is the best way to take better control of our water consumption, increase supply efficiency, reduce wastage, and improve the country’s overall resilience to drought.

Real-time data generated by AMI - a vital tool in battle to reduce leakage and meet unprecedented – and growing – demand

That’s because as well as giving customers greater control over their water use and bills, the detailed, real-time data generated by AMI is a vital tool in our battle to reduce leakage and meet unprecedented – and growing – demand.

At Thames Water we are already using AMI technology to help us optimise our supply and minimise wastage, as part of our ‘smart water’ initiative.

Software developed by our data team – a suite of 16 data science products – means we are now able to make better real-time decisions about the operation of our network, and respond more quickly to blockages, leaks, and burst pipes.

By monitoring – and responding to – intelligent, real-time analytics, we can reduce the number and duration of supply interruptions experienced by our customers. The impact of our AMI technology has already been significant, including:

Saving 43 million litres of water per day

Smart meters have helped us to detect more than 28,000 leaks on customers’ private supply pipes. Timely repairs on these leaks have saved a massive 43 million litres of water a day.

Dealing with sewage blockages 10 x faster

We have significantly increased our response time to sewage blockages. Before AMI we cleared on average 20-30 blockages per month, we now clear 350 blockages per month.

Meeting our leakage reduction targets

Customer side leaks account for around a quarter of Thames Water’s total leakage and the meter data was cited as playing a large part in meeting our leakage reduction target in 2019/20. 

Helping our customers to have ‘smarter homes’

Data from smart meters is also being used to support our award-winning smarter home visit programme, by highlighting higher-consuming households who are then prioritised for a visit by a Thames Water engineer. During the visit, our customers receive free water saving advice and can have gadgets installed in their homes to help them reduce their water use, such as water saving tap and shower heads. Smart metered customers use on average 17 per cent less water than those without a meter and typically high-using households can reduce their usage by around 100 litres per day following a smarter home visit.

Reducing supply interruption due to burst pipes in the winter

Our ‘freeze-thaw’ indicator runs simulations and allows us to increase supply availability at reservoirs to mitigate water lost from frozen pipes that have burst.

We are proud of the fact that our AMI / smart water meter programme is sector leading. By 2025, we will begin the roll out of smart meters across the Thames Valley, and we expect to have meters fitted for all suitable Thames Water homes by 2035.

We would like to see government, regulators and the rest of the sector getting on board too, with smart meters rolled out to all homes across the UK as a matter of national priority.

This is very indicative of the many conversations that Joe Lawson and many within Bentley have had with various UK water utilities throughout this year, understanding the real time status of the UK’s water networks has been top priority for many years but with the recent infrastructure, weather and economic challenges, and threat of worse to come for the UK, this topic has never been more important.

With the steady increase in smart meter and IoT solutions throughout the network, the amount of available data has skyrocketed and is on an increasing trajectory. This influx of data provides an incredible opportunity to optimise the business of water through advanced analysis and data driven decision making to improve network resilience, reduce non-revenue water losses and drive higher quality environments for our consumers.

The increase in digital twin ready projects and drive towards the next generation of data driven operation centres is connecting disparate data, information and knowledge to provide a wider and more insightful view of a utilities water system and truly enable data driven decision making.

This is all being done through centralisation and analysis solutions such as the iTwin powered OpenFlows digital twin platform, digital twins are becoming an ingrained part of the UK water utility networks work, and will soon begin to will improve the reliability of water systems, reduce utilities’ CapEx and OpEx, lessen their environmental impact, and provide their consumers with safe and efficient services.