Condition monitoring in the water utility industry

Whether Fresh Water Supply, or Waste Water Collection and Treatment, the water industry depends on the reliable and cost effective operation of a huge network of assets. Costs are paramount, and the electricity costs of pumping water are typically one of, if not the, biggest externally purchased operational cost. 

Being able to monitor the energy consumption pump-by-pump, and to identify defects that are wasting energy, and to be able to quantify the cost-benefits of interventions allows efficiency to be optimised. MBVI is particularly appropriate in the water sector because of the number of inaccessible assets like borehole pumps and submersible pumps

In the Water Industry, Operating Cost and Energy Efficiency are paramount; for most water utilities, the electricity bill is the highest external operating cost, and the vast majority of this electricity is used by pumps.

The through life cost of pumps is typically dominated by the energy cost, which can be many times larger than the initial purchase price of the pump, so ensuring pumps are operating efficiently can have a significant payback.

Reliability is also important, but much of the water industry still operates with a basic run-to-failure regime.  This can waste money because in addition to the additional maintenance costs associated with operating a breakfix regime, unplanned downtime can lead to contingency costs for pumping / tankering and can impact on customer serviceability through loss of pressure, foul flooding, untreated discharges and the resulting breaches of consent.

The UK water industry has recently seen how severe the regulatory penalties can be for allowing such foul flooding and untreated discharges, with penalties for one single company exceeding £120m over 5 years.

In addition to these direct costs, reputational costs can be very significant. A penny off the share price can represent a drop in market capitalisation of hundreds of millions of pounds. In addition to the simple cost of electricity, many water utilities face pressure to reduce their carbon emissions footprint.

Faraday Predictive MBVI systems not only monitor the health of the equipment and identify developing faults giving you time to organise repair before failure occurs, they also monitor energy consumption, pump by pump.

They assess the amount of energy being wasted by any faults present, giving you the means to make a cost-justified decision on whether it is worth intervening to deal with this fault.

Accessibility of some pumps can be difficult which in the past has made condition monitoring difficult where it relied on traditional techniques such as vibration monitoring. Submerged or submersible pumps, borehole pumps, pumps in drywells requiring entry permits all made simple data collection difficult.

Faraday Predictive technology transforms this situation, because all the required measurements are taken in the motor switchgear, which is always in a clean, dry, accessible location.

Faraday Predictive condition monitoring is not limited just to pumps – it is also equally effective for monitoring blowers, fans, compressors, mixers, and generators.

Case studies in water

Sewage Pumping case study

Fresh water pumping – borehole pump case study