United Utilities is installing around 100,000 listening devices over the next two years as part of a £30 million leakage detection project.
The “acoustic loggers” which can fit in the palm of a hand, will be installed directly onto the fittings of a water pipe and will listen to the flow of water, detecting changes indicating a leak. When a leak is detected an alarm will alert the company’s control centre and an engineer will be dispatched.
In total 44,000 devices are being installed across the network this summer and a further 50,000 are scheduled for 2020.
A trial involving 2,000 devices was carried out last year in Liverpool and Manchester city centres. It is thought they have saved up to 5 million litres per day.
The North West water provider says the vast system, which is 26,000 miles in length, is long enough to wrap around the world if the pipes were laid end to end.
Kevin Fowlie, United Utilities’ network delivery director, said: “We have one of the largest and oldest water supply networks in the UK and it’s a constant battle to keep on top of leaks.
“Many leaks never show on the surface, so it is a round-the-clock challenge to find and fix them.
“Following the extreme dry weather last year we’ve seen leakage rates increase due to ground movement.
“We have doubled our leakage detection and repair resource to meet our leakage targets, and now we need to go even further.
“Our customers have told us it is one of the issues most important to them, so we have committed to a 20 per cent reduction in leakage over the coming five year investment period, and that means using the latest innovations.
“By 2020 we will have the largest estate of acoustic logger technology in the world.
“Every quarter of a mile on our water network we will be able to glean real-time data, allowing us to respond faster and more accurately when a pipe begins to leak.”
Reducing leakage is a key priority for the water sector, with firms coming under increasing pressure to improve performance as the threat of nationalisation looms over the industry.
In April Water UK published its new public interest commitment which includes a pledge to triple leakage reduction rates across the industry by 2030, as part of a long-term strategy to reduce consumption and invest more in water transfer and storage.