Portsmouth Water reduced leakage to its lowest point ever in 2019/20 and saved nine million litres of water per day.
Head of water resources Jim Barker told Utility Week that the 19 per cent reduction would likely put Portsmouth “very close to the top” of the industry league tables on leakage when they are released next month, and put the success down to investing in new technology.
“After the freeze thaw of 2018 we invested heavily year-on-year in our fixed acoustic logging network. These microphones listen to the flow of water and can identify where a leak is to within a couple of meters.”
The teams are now repairing more leaks below the surface than above, he added.
Looking ahead to the challenge of AMP7, he said the company would use pressure monitors, which are more effective on plastic piping than acoustic loggers. Portsmouth will also utilise artificial intelligence and a digital twin network to find changes in pressure that may indicate a leak in the pipe.
Around half of Portsmouth’s network plastic piping so the pressure monitors will improve surveillance across the network.
“We knew we couldn’t rest on our laurels and saw we had metal sewn up and now needed to do the same for the plastic pipes,” Barker said. “The trouble with leakage is it’s weather dependent, so all companies have a plan for AMP7 but we’re all slightly in the lap of the gods in terms of weather. We need to see it coming and make the repairs to react quickly to cold or hot weather.”
Portsmouth’s official leakage figure is 23.6 million litres per day with almost half of that amount lost in leaks on customers’ property, which the company helps billpayers to find and fix.
“All water is precious at the moment so to know of a leak and not repair it is not the right attitude to have. It could be a once in a life-time event for a customer but we repair them everyday,” Barker said.
During lockdown the teams focused their attention on rural areas where people could work while socially distancing. The acoustic logger networks continued to find leaks in urban areas and the most pressing of these were repaired.