Issue:
The UK’s Wessex Water is nearing completion of a major infrastructure programme to aid water transfer across its network and is supporting this with roll-out of a centralised system to optimise pumping. Keith Hayward hears about Wessex Water’s Optimiser and the changes it is prompting for the utility.
A smarter future for water utilities depends on wider use of technologies able to capture, transmit and interpret data; that much is clear. But as a major project entering the commissioning phase for the UK’s Wessex Water shows, it also depends very much on aligning this technology with the realities of the core network assets and with the workforce charged with managing these assets.
Wessex Water supplies around 280 million litres of water a day to some 1.3 million customers across a 10,000km2 area. Smarter operation, in terms of more centralised control, offers a way to meet the future challenges faced by a network of this scale. It also translates into some substantial engineering as far as the core network infrastructure is concerned, and is prompting a culture change away from the traditional approach of making operational decisions locally and in isolation from the wider network.
To view the full article, log in here. New users can register here for free trial access, or subscribe here.
Keywords:
- UK, Servelec Technologies, smart utilities
