Vodafone's head of innovation Danny Kelly tells Utility Week about its new software platform that he says will allow water companies to combine data from both new hardware and legacy assets to create smarter networks.
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Water Excellence
Highlighting innovative ways in which water companies are maximising efficiency while minimising operational costs
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South Staffs has secured government funding of £10 million under the Green Recovery Challenge that enabled it to upgrade its largest water treatment plant to a ceramic filtration system that will save around 1,000 tonnes carbon annually. The company plans to invest around £55 million upgrading two treatment works during AMP7.
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Portsmouth has begun a smart meter trial ahead of a wider rollout during AMP8. Water efficiency manager Lianne Riggs told Utility Week customers are less interested in saving money because bills are low but environmental messages do resonate.
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The judging panel for the main competition within Ofwat's innovation fund has been named with eight people chosen from industry, academia, R&D and beyond the water sector. The competition is designed to encourage innovative ideas, collaboration and sharing of risk to develop projects.
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Yorkshire Water, with the University of York, has begun work on a research hub to improve efficiency of wastewater treatment and extract value from sludge processing while working towards its 2030 net zero carbon ambitions
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Affinity Water will measure and report on its non-operational emissions from next year as it sets out plans to be carbon negative for scopes one two and three emissions by 2030. Nature-based solutions and developing a blue carbon finance framework are included in the plans.
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Storing around 10% of the capital’s water, the Queen Elizabeth II (QEII) Reservoir being under maintenance for the best part of 2021 necessitated an urgent shake-up of London’s water. Here, project leaders from Thames Water discuss the process of taking the reservoir out of action and £25 million worth of upgrades.
Analysis
Utility Week Innovate’s first round-up of 2022 features Veolia’s first UK electric vehicle battery recycling facility, pan-utility efforts to improve priority services register support, and plans to trial solutions to smart meter ‘blackspots’.
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Following on from the success of Northumbrian Water’s fifth Innovation Festival, head of innovation Angela MacOscar identifies ten standout innovation trends for the water sector in 2022.
Comment
The Regulators' Alliance for Progressing Infrastructure Development has called for water companies to provide evidence of how projects will drive down whole-life carbon emissions as they progress through the gated process. It called for inclusion of renewable energy generation or carbon sequestration where possible in the large-scale schemes being developed to answer looming water shortages.
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Everflow CEO Josh Gill discusses the need for the water industry to focus on advances in machine learning, open data and AI as well as what the sector can learn from innovation in finance.
Interviews
Philippe Sébérac, director of technological and scientific expertise at Veolia, explains how the firm and its project partners have updated their early warning system for identifying and quantifying Covid-19 in wastewater to cope with new variants, and discusses a broader rollout.
Analysis
Spring, the water sector’s centre of excellence, has officially launched as an online facility to develop, incubate and share innovative ideas to solve the most pressing issues the industry faces. It will be an online innovation platform for the sector to connect with the individuals and organisations that can develop solutions to meet environmental and social challenges the sector faces
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The water industry is under siege from shareholders, regulators, pressure groups and the public. Yet there is a way forward. Join us in exploring how industry leaders can create a new and audacious world of water that will satisfy everyone.
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To mark the launch of the water sector’s innovation centre of excellence, Spring, on 20 December, client programme director Shaunna Berendsen discusses the importance of customer buy-in to innovation and the need to make utilities ‘cool’.
Interviews
Nicci Russell, as independent chair of water efficiency advisory group, has written to ministers, regulators and water company CEOs with a series of recommendations to put water efficiency at the heart of more policy and regulatory decisions, including doubling the amount spent on efficiency in PR24.
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The latest raft of utility industry innovation includes a new apprenticeship collaboration for Utility Warehouse, a claimed ‘world first’ for National Grid and Hitachi Energy, and plans for a new hydrogen hub in Southampton.
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Harry Armstrong, Ofwat’s director of regulatory policy, reflects on creativity and collaboration from the first 12 months of the regulator’s Innovation Fund.
Analysis