i2O Water helps Veolia Water save 1-5 million litres of water a day and nearly 100,000GB a year in water wastage reduction

i2O Water Ltd, a provider of water network monitoring solutions, has today announced that it has helped Veolia Water realise savings in excess of 1.5 million litres of water a day, nearly £100,000 a year, and improve customer service, following a successful roll out of i2O Water’s integrated network monitoring system across 31 Veolia Water sites in the UK.

Veolia Water, which provides water and wastewater management services throughout the UK, approached i2O in August 2010, following very large and unpredictable demand it was experiencing on the Wentworth Estate Golf Club during golf tournaments and periods of dry weather at the surrounding area in Surrey.  During these times, when demand increased significantly, Veolia Water needed to supply much higher quantities of water to the area to address demands from the  golf course, which in turn had the effect of lowering the pressure of the available water in the network. Levels of customer service would be impacted unless Veolia Water set water pressures very high during this period, which were too high for the rest of the year.  Unless Veolia Water could actively manage and control the pressure to address this fluctuating demand, it was either going to provide poor customer service or risk running the pressure too high, resulting in high leakage and water bursts.

To help solve this problem, Veolia Water installed i2O’s integrated network management system and was able to remotely reduce burst mains and leakage and improve response to network issues. The solution provides the ability to proactively control and optimise the water pressure, which helps Veolia Water optimise the management of its network.  The reduction of background water leakage on the first system alone was estimated at 300,000 litres a day following installation and optimisation, and proved such a success that Veolia immediately rolled out the i2O technology into another 30 areas by the end of 2010. This has resulted in a leakage reduction of 1,500,000 litres of water a day – nearly enough water to fill an Olympic swimming pool each day.

Stephen Eeles, Leakage and Network Operations Manager at Veolia Water said: “The implementation of the i2O solution has enabled us to proactively address pressure management issues across the Veolia Water network, enabling us to focus on problem hotspots where we were seeing supply issues due to demand spikes. This has enabled us to realise significant water and cost savings and, importantly, improve the service we are able to offer our customers.”

Adam Kingdon, co-founder and CEO of i2O Water commented:  “We are extremely excited to be working with Veolia Water to help it better manage pressure in its water network. The i2O solution involves deploying smart pressure controllers and sensors into the water network that allow remote monitoring and control of water pressure, ultimately reducing water leakage and bursts. The technology has been installed at water companies globally with excellent results, consistently cutting leakage and energy use by an average of 20% and reducing new bursts by up to 50%.  It also has proven to be easy to deploy and easy to use.”

There is a perception that water shortages mostly affect developing nations, but increasingly developed nations are feeling the effects. Recently the United Nations World Water Development Report* advised that water shortages are already constraining economic growth in California, China, Australia and India.  Presently in the UK, it is estimated that around 3.3 billion litres of water are wasted every day through leakage.