Scottish Water pours £100mn into IoT tech

Scottish Water has announced an investment of up to £100 million ($122.7 million) in its wastewater infrastructure, including remote sensors and data-driven insight.

This latest investment is hoped to improve the water company’s service to customers, protect the environment, reduce costs and assist in its journey towards net zero carbon emissions.

The early stages of investment over the next five years will be funnelled into the company’s intelligent asset base, designed to use new technology to monitor sewage pipes rather than rely on customers notifying problems.

Trials of the new technology have shown that it will give the company real-time insights into how its network is operating and enable it to be more proactive in how it responds to issues and to solve problems before customers and the environment are affected.

The technology is currently being trialled in four areas – Erskine, Inverness, Lossiemouth and East Calder – which have suffered from flooding and pollution events historically.

Scottish Water has placed sensors that detect the presence of blockages and has used this data to avert potential Environmental Pollution Incidents (EPIs) and flooding of customers’ premises.

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Using the learning from these four areas, Scottish Water has stated its intention to extend this intelligence into other areas which experience similar issues.

The goal is to access new and existing operational data from across the infrastructure, securely connecting it via Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and other devices to provide near real-time data and reduce the reliance on site visits. This would enable considerable cost savings because 600 samples are gathered daily from across Scottish Water’s 1,800 treatment works.

This capability is being installed at 17 wastewater ‘exemplar’ treatment works. At the first one, Laighpark WWTW in Paisley, Scottish Water now has real-time final effluent compliance data which, together with real-time control and intervention, is helping to reduce risk of compliance breaches as well as reduce energy consumption across the site.

Condition sensors have also been installed on large assets such as pumps which, when they fail, can result in significant cost and pollution.

By monitoring vibration and temperature, Scottish Water maintenance teams can proactively intervene if the signals go outside ‘normal’ operating levels, avoiding the cost of failure and pollution while extending asset life.

Scottish Water has invested more than £5 million ($6.1 million) in the wastewater work and about £2m ($2.5) in the sensors in the network pilots so far.

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This announcement comes in light of the utility’s wastewater treatment assets, where a major challenge has been little access to real-time data on treatment quality as well as critical asset condition and performance.

The utility has stated how, as a result, maintenance is more responsive than predictive, energy consumption is higher than it could be and asset life is potentially shortened.

Chris Toop, general manager – digital, stated: “We are very encouraged by the early results coming through our pilot works. The innovative use of sensors and analytics in this way represents a much bigger shift towards predicting and preventing issues before they impact on our customers and environment – ensuring that vital services flow smoothly and efficiently.”

Joyce Gray, wastewater business manager, added: “This is a complex programme of works and a critical part of our digital transformation journey, helping transform our wastewater business and drive a step-change in operational performance.

“It will allow us to make better operational decisions, be more efficient and to drive significant benefits, particularly in relation to energy consumption and responsive asset failures.”

Atos and Capgemini are serving as the utility’s digital partners in the provision of IT services and their digital transformation.