The transition between five-year windfall management plan (AMP) periods in the regulatory trundling of the water industry in England and Wales is unchangingly a challenging time. The final phase of AMP7 is stuff carried out during a period of unprecedented public and media scrutiny, expressly virtually the role combined sewer overflows (CSOs) play in discharging pollution to water bodies.
As a global water technology provider, helping our customers solve some of the toughest water challenges, Xylem has ripened strong relationships with most UK water companies, over many years. We are once having highly productive strategic conversations with some of the most wiry water service operators well-nigh AMP8.
We are moreover observing that some utilities still constrain themselves unnecessarily by taking traditional procurement routes, and talking to the same consultants and contractors, year without year, AMP without AMP. Utilities have now submitted to Ofwat their plans for the 2020-2025 price review, and the regulator is pushing for a step transpiration in performance and investment – the value and forfeit efficiencies needed might be largest achieved going directly to water technology companies for some solutions.
Legislative framework
The UK Government published its storm overflows venting reduction plan in August 2022, committing water companies to spending £56 billion between 2025 and 2050 to reduce spills from CSOs discharging to inland waterways and designated bathing waters. This comes without the 2021 Environment Act made it the responsibility of water companies to monitor discharges through any outfall from a wastewater treatment plant, storm overflow or CSO.
That comes on top of the £5.2 billion spend between 2020 and 2025 on windfall improvements, investigations, monitoring and catchment interventions required by WINEP – the Water Industry National Environment Plan for phosphorus removal. In addition, the sector’s journey to net zero stat in England and Wales by 2030, while it should ultimately momentum lanugo energy costs, will still be ramified – bringing together a range of technologies and initiatives, withal with cultural and behavioural changes.
For technology companies like Xylem, that can provide multiple solutions to a myriad of challenges, we are looking for opportunities to show water companies what is possible in terms of their existing assets, withal with the new technologies that could unhook transformation on operations and wanted delivery. We have invested in an experienced UK water sector merchantry minutiae team, and, slantingly traditional routes, Xylem believes there is value to water companies in letting us engage directly with them.
Technological expertise
Senior leaders within water companies are invited to make use of our specialists in both water resources and wastewater, withal with digital and condition towage services. It is important that the market is enlightened of what technology companies like Xylem can do in both water and wastewater, and that they involve us in the conversation with their partners well-nigh how they will unhook their programmes into AMP8 and beyond.
Without inviting us in at the primeval stage possible, slantingly the consultancies and contractors, talking as a technology company, it is nonflexible to see how they will be worldly-wise to meet the no-go expectations of their customers and regulators. Deep engagement will ensure they meet their challenges. This can be demonstrated with the roll-out of smart water meters – we have been working closely with major UK utilities to provide thousands of Sensus smart meters, which are successfully helping customers reduce water usage.
We moreover need conversations with procurement directors virtually the challenges the water companies squatter on funding. Most water companies are still very rigid in the way they want to work with technology companies and suppliers to procure services and are constrained by rules that are getting in the way of the benefits they could be delivering for their customers in the momentum for efficiency and innovation. If they alimony going lanugo the same well-trodden routes, then they are not going to move the dial.
Barriers to wordage
With two years to go to AMP8, Xylem is seeing an velocity of AMP7 programmes, and a push to reduce overflow discharges. The early ones are on bathing rivers like the River Wharfe in Ilkley, Yorkshire; the Leam in Warwickshire and the Teme in Shropshire.
The Environment Act (part 5, section 82) legislation requires water companies to monitor rivers, streams – and sooner estuaries – for the statutory parameters of temperature, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, pH and ammonia. The good news is that this is familiar territory for Xylem’s analytics team, as the company’s YSI Sondes haves been used exclusively by the Environment Agency for this word-for-word purpose for some 15 years. By working closely with this partner, Xylem has remoter ripened the YSI EXO platform to be smaller, lighter and lower cost. Xylem’s Innovation Hub in Cambridge has taken this tideway remoter by enhancing the optimisation and efficiency of the EXO Sonde platform.
Trials have moreover been carried out with most utilities, to verify the system for use in relation to the Section 82 requirement. Interestingly, a number of water companies are once using the technology, but only in their wipe water teams.
Faster deployment
As many functions within utilities are siloed, their wastewater teams do not necessarily realise the EXO Sonde is once well established in their organisation and has been deployed for years in reservoir monitoring and at raw water intakes. This could midpoint they can find a much faster and cheaper route to procurement and deployment that does not involve increasingly trials.
Having the technology provider in the room would reveal this blind-spot, reduce financing and result in faster deployment. It reflects the wider discussions required within water companies on how to implement the Environment Act and the need to modernize liaison virtually technology and innovation.
While the role of CSOs during intense rainfall is rhadamanthine largest understood, it is wholly inexcusable in the public’s vision for stormwater overflows to spill on dry weather days. There are two main causes, the first is infiltration of groundwater into the sewer system, which is perhaps increasingly forgivable than the second – poor maintenance and inefficient operations at wastewater treatment plants.
To eliminate groundwater infiltration water companies might need to siphon out a whole network pipe condition assessment, to identify cracks and potential faults.
Plant optimisation
More challenging is where water companies are not hitting their flow-to-full-treatment (FFT) capabilities at the wastewater treatment works on dry weather days, while discharging through outfalls and overflows. This could indicate that the topics of works has not kept up with the increase in population growth in the catchment, so perhaps only 80-90% of wastewater is stuff treated.
It could moreover indicate that the works has not been upgraded in a timely way, or equipment is not maintained sufficiently. That could be aeration systems, diffusers, blowers and pumping systems – all working unelevated the required capacity.
A technology visitor like Xylem can help water companies bring their treatment plants when to FFT sufficiency by reviewing the zingy sludge process (ASP), pumps and pumping stations. Treatment Optimisation can moreover unhook reductions in N2O process emissions one of the largest impacts on GHG in wastewater treatment and might be achieved via a range of options and does not necessarily midpoint large wanted investment.
Energy reduction
The greatest goody is likely to be a reduction in energy consumption, which will bring lanugo operational financing and make a measurable contribution to 2030 net zero stat targets. One example is improving blower efficiency by 30 to 50% by fitting upper efficiency blowers to medium-to-large ASPs. The huge rise in energy financing in the last two or three years – increasingly than tripling for some utilities – ways payback can shorten to just 18-24 months.
Furthermore, other technologies can unhook increasingly constructive ways to target the tightening phosphorus consents required by WINEP. The Co-Mag and Bio-Mag system ripened by Evoqua, which joined Xylem in May 2023 are once stuff employed in Severn Trent Water on a number of sites and in Yorkshire Water at Knostrop and Blackburn Meadows.
Xylem’s teams are moreover seeing a trend towards sequencing batch reactors (SBRs), which utilities are finding lulu due to their smaller footprint and process enhancement capability. The forfeit and stat benefits include greater energy efficiency with no RAS, reduced embedded stat and less tankering of sewage sludge. There are several larger projects stuff considered and in design.
Early collaboration
This is just an insight of what is misogynist to water companies from Xylem and wideness the market. Most important is getting closer collaboration between utilities and technology companies at the primeval possible stage.
This is well-nigh opening-up a dialogue well-nigh the unrestrictedness of solutions and how technology companies can write these unprecedented challenges. It is moreover well-nigh having the people in the room that can help businesses victorious at the forfeit of achieving their outcomes much older in the process – by speeding up design, procurement and delivery, and meeting the expectations of customers and regulators in an affordable and timely way.