Eric Verheylewegen, VP Strategic Initiatives Enterprise and Land Mobile at Viasat, discusses how satellite-enabled IoT technology can help water companies build a safer and sustainable water network.

Eric Verheylewegen: The recent £11 million investment in infrastructure to cut sewage spills reflects the increasing scrutiny facing the UK’s water industry, with companies having faced over £240 million in sanctions this year due to wastewater failures. Elsewhere, calls for action over ‘forever chemicals’ in water systems shows that attention to protecting both the environment and consumers is only increasing. So too is the risk of sanctions facing those which fail to comply.

Tighter rules are expected across the board, with the government currently considering enabling regulators to deliver larger penalties of up to £500,000 more quickly to companies breaching current standards. Adding to these pressures, extreme weather events, such as prolonged heatwaves and sudden floods, are predicted to be become the norm, making managing precious water resources essential to guard against both scarcity and overflow.

Amidst this current climate of intense regulatory scrutiny and industry changes, water operators are looking to gain better control across their networks, helping them to keep water supplies clean and mitigate costly leaks. Here, satellite-enabled IoT technology can emerge as a key tool. By providing real-time oversight of their extensive water infrastructure, this tech enables utility firms to significantly enhance their operational efficiency - unlocking capabilities to pre-empt, prevent and resolve issues before they become major disruptions.

This always-on monitoring improves network safety and sustainability, empowering utility providers to build resilience across their networks, and helping them to avoid potential regulatory and financial setbacks while protecting the environment.

The gathering challenge for UK water

Water companies are currently facing supervisory pressures and costly fines, and the establishment of one new regulatory body to oversee the entire water system is likely to bring new, challenging regulatory reforms. Alongside these pressures, increasing dry spells of weather are raising concerns. Currently, a lot of UK water infrastructure is old, with leaks, bursts and general inefficiencies common across these networks, raising the risk of regulatory consequences, with companies being increasingly penalised for sewage and water leaks.

Because of how large water networks are, it can be difficult to find exactly where an issue arises from, making it difficult to quickly fix the problem. What’s more, due to the vast spread of pipes and tanks, issues are often only detected once large enough to cause disruption, risking greater damage to the wider network.

Water companies must move from a reactive to a more proactive and preventative approach, actively anticipating challenges rather than responding once the damage has been done. This change will help safeguard the environment from detrimental sewage leaks while helping to protect their bottom lines – a win, win.

From reactive to resilient: how IoT transforms water management

Real-time monitoring via IoT can help water companies proactively manage and improve their critical and often remote assets like reservoirs and pipelines, moving to a more proactive approach which is often more cost effective.

Using IoT technologies, companies can deploy sensors across their water network. This enables real-time data collection on essential parts of their system, from the pressure and flow rates in pipes to reservoir levels and overall water quality. Enabled by satellite connectivity, or perhaps a combination of satellite and terrestrial network capabilities, devices can stay connected, reliably, across the entire network: from city centers to the most remote locations.

Solutions, such as those provided by one of our ecosystem partners Stevens Water, use this data to provide actionable insights into the condition and operation of equipment, which can help companies detect issues such as leaks or equipment failures and fix these early-on, preventing larger and more costly damage across the network.

IoT devices can also be used to control equipment remotely, such as pumps and valves. This ensures that if leaks are detected, or if conditions change, firms can respond rapidly and redirect resources, reducing the need for manual intervention.

Ultimately, this ‘always-on' monitoring can help to prevent sewage leaking into the environment and the loss or contamination of valuable water resources, not only improving operational efficiency and costs for water firms but also bolstering the durability of their infrastructure.

Why satellites are key for 'always-on' monitoring

In order for IoT technologies to work effectively, they require constant, reliable connectivity. However, many parts of the UK’s water network are in more remote areas where cellular connectivity is unstable or non-existent.

This is where satellite connectivity comes in, providing consistent connectivity and ensuring IoT monitoring sensors can remain always on. This means companies can gather reliable and real-time data from across their network and can use these insights to bolster resilience in operations regardless of location.

With the failure of cellular networks resulting in environmental incidents in the past, satellite connectivity ensures an alternative or back-up to controlling these systems, preventing similar events occurring by guaranteeing continuous environmental monitoring, remote infrastructure control, and advanced metering.

Cultivating a future ready water system

Water management challenges now cost hundreds of millions of pounds due to leaks and overflows, and upgrading ageing water infrastructure and improving visibility across water networks is now essential, particularly in ensuring chemicals and pollutants are kept out of water supply systems and the surrounding environment.

As regulators strive to improve environmental protection and even penalize companies which fall short of rising sustainability and safety standards, satellite IoT provides a key piece to this complex puzzle. By enabling water companies to monitor issues in real-time across the entire network, satellite tech can ensure problems are detected early on, helping to prevent costly and disruptive damage later down the line.

This proactive approach is essential to creating more efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable water systems, helping utilities firms to safeguard both the environment and the financial health of their networks: securing vital water supply for generations to come.