Leakage situation in the water market
The water wholesalers are being challenged to reduce leakage by at least 16% in the five-year period up to 2025. Three quarters of the companies are meeting their leakage targets whilst some have decreased leakage by over 10% in the past 2 years. ‘Ofwat has strongly pushed companies to cut leakage over recent years, including challenging the sector to reduce leakage by at least 16% in the 5-year period up to 2025. Today’s figures show that progress has been made, with industry wide eakage being reduced by 11% since 2017-18, heading towards the target of a 50% reduction by 2050. However, there is more that can be done.’
The challenge of accounting for the water consumption. Where to start?
As stated by Ofwat, all water companies will be starting from various baseline leakage positions with targets that are set considering the water resource challenges within each companies’ region. Thinking about the predicament of water supply issues in large cities due to population increases, asset and infrastructure challenges, calculating unaccounted-for physical and non-physical water usage in the network represents important issues that wholesalers need to consider.
What is unaccounted for water and how is it different from leakage
According to the World Bank Group definition, Unaccounted-for Water (UFW) is the variation between the volume of water fed into a city’s network and the metered volume of water consumed by the customers.
UFW has two elements:
- Physical losses due to leakage from infrastructure assets.
- Administrative losses due to unlawful connections and under registration of metered
consumption.
While every case is different, often both components contribute roughly equally to the leakage issue. Simply put, leakage is all water that doesn’t make it to the customer. It happens because of broken pipes or deteriorated water asset health. Unaccounted-for Water is not the same. UFW is the water that has been used but has not been accounted for in commercial terms, in other words not charged nor paid for. This is the challenge for water wholesalers. It potentially costs millions of pounds and erodes essential infrastructure improvement budgets.
Who or what is to blame when it comes to UFW?
Water usage (UFW and leakage) is measured in megalitres, or millions of litres, per day (Ml/d). One megalitre is the equivalent to about 12,500 baths, or 40% of an Olympic size swimming pool. (Thames Water)
There are two key types of contributors to the UFW challenges which puts pressure on water resources:
– Construction sites.
– Washing systems used for cars, buses, trains, or planes.
Accounting for consumption at these sites can be demanding and comes with different operational challenges. The upside is that it can be done with the appropriate mix of trained and experienced field investigation supported by desktop validation, both of which Occutrace provides.
UFW on construction sites. What’s the damage?
Construction sites use water for welfare, dust suppression, cement silos, wheel washing and various other requirements. Typically, 0.001 Ml/d is 1000 litres of water. Multiply this across numerous sites in a city and the volumetric consumption used becomes vast. If the use of water on a construction site is not paid for, the cost of processing it is not recovered. All water usage is processed before and after use and therefore should be charged. That’s why we,
Occutrace, are here to help in locating and identifying sites where unlawful water consumption takes place. Our team are trained and experienced at carrying out detailed site surveys allowing appropriate analysis to determine if a connection is lawful. As a result, we help water wholesalers in establishing potential levels of unaccounted-for water consumption. For example, for one of our clients, a major water wholesaler in a large metropolitan area Occutrace have facilitated saving 1.1955 Ml/d for the period from April 2022 – August 2022.
Unaccounted-For Water within wash systems
Speaking about wash systems, we mean all commercial car washes, bus, train, or airplane washes etc. Typically, they all require large amounts of water in their daily operational activities. The largest contributor to the UFW, unsurprisingly, are car washes. Regardless of whether they have permanent location or are operating in a mobile mode, these entities are possibly the worst culprits of legitimate water usage. Unlawful connections to standpipes or otherwise legitimate/illegitimate water outlets will not necessarily register easily on the wholesaler’s network and this causes further customer anxieties with unexplained increasing consumption.
What can water wholesalers do to locate and manage UFW?
All clean water supplied by a wholesaler then used by a customer must be processed, cleaned, and accounted for. The dilemmas described above are complex and time consuming for any water wholesaler, no matter their location in the UK.
At Occutrace, we pride ourselves in identifying consumptions via site audits carried out by experienced professionals. Our field technicians rise to the challenges of these more demanding site visits by using their expertise and knowledge to engage with users to carry out successful site inspections.
It’s time to act now. Are you struggling to resolve the challenges of unaccounted-for water and need help? Feel free to give us a call to discuss and see for yourself what we can do for you.